How I grew my all-volunteer nonprofit in uncertain times
By Sheryl Kurland, founder of Find Your Fabulosity
— While institutional nonprofit organizations and foundations scramble in the wake of federal agency audits and subsequent funding freezes, independent volunteer-based nonprofit organizations continue to chug along, albeit more modestly. Their grassroots infrastructure is largely built on volunteerism, savvy social media, private passion-driven donations, and clever networking and incentive programs.
Does anyone remember the Fabergé Organics Shampoo television commercial from the late 1970s? The on-screen model declares that she loves the shampoo so much, she decided to share the news by telling two friends… and they told two friends… and they told two friends… and they… well, you get the picture. Dare I say, this brilliant television commercial was the first example of how to make a product go viral? So much so, that in 1984, political scientist James Fowler cited the Fabergé Organics Shampoo campaign as the impetus for his study on the impact of word-of-mouth social networking on voter turnout. This was decades before social media even existed. The infrastructure of successfully run independent nonprofits work in much the same way.
My own nonprofit organization, Find Your Fabulosity, was born from my passion to help victims of domestic violence re-build their morale, and to help them once again feel beautiful and powerful. As a trained Domestic Violence Advocate, I volunteered at my local domestic violence shelter, leading regular workshops for these women. One day, I decided to purchase a bunch of lipsticks to bring to the next workshop as a way of perking up the event and adding a bit of glint and glimmer to a room that was heavy with pain and trauma. At the end of that next workshop, I placed the pile of lipsticks on a table, thanked the women for attending, and encouraged them to each take a lipstick home with them. What I witnessed was shocking and wholly transformative. The mood in the room had instantly shifted as the women began perusing, discussing, and helping each other pick the best lipstick color. In that moment, they refocused from a place of unimaginable pain to feeling like women again. With each workshop, I witnessed the same transformation happen again and again. These women felt beautiful, and I knew I was onto something important.
In 2016, I began my 501c3 nonprofit organization, Find Your Fabulosity. Eight years later, through cultivating a network of dedicated volunteers, women’s shelters, cosmetics companies, concerned corporations, and fellow women’s organizations; we’ve been able to donate more than 100,000 lipsticks to victims of domestic violence. The monetary donations and new lipsticks we have collected totals more than $2 Million in donations, to date. We have also provided our Get Help Gift Bags to women still struggling to leave their abusers, and we continue to get flooded with thank you letters from lipstick recipients who received our gifted lipsticks while they were healing from abuse.
Below are the five key steps I took to build and sustain a successful and impactful independent, volunteer-based nonprofit organization.
Rally family and friends to your cause
Start with friends and family. Reach out to your inner circle and let them in on the goals you have for your nonprofit. Explain to them in detail the mission of your nonprofit, why it is important to pursue, and make them a part of your journey. You want them to feel your purpose and your passion in their hearts, which is important for getting their help and support in multiple ways.
Tap into these “free” resources. Do you have a family member who is an attorney? Ask them to review or proofread your legal documents, such as articles of incorporation. Is a friend an expert in marketing? Invite them to brainstorm marketing ideas with you. Do any of your friends or family members work for nonprofits? They can offer valuable been-there-done-that information.
Once you get friends and family members involved, they will likely be as enthusiastic as you and share contacts they know, providing additional resourceful people to be in your orbit or on your team.
Make it official with 501(c)(3) status
If you want corporate product and/or monetary donations, the support of other nonprofit organizations and buy-in from volunteers, you must dot your I’s and cross your T’s. That means paperwork. Get your 501(c)(3) status, organize your board of directors, and file your articles of incorporation. Having the proper documentation legitimizes you and incentivizes more donations by becoming a tax write-off for those who donate to your cause.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, I was able to approach companies like Target and Walmart. I submitted my documentation paperwork along with our fact sheet, and I receive gift card donations that I was able to convert into lipstick purchases for DV victims.
Information to obtain your 501(c)(3) status is available for free online.
Nurture mutually beneficial relationships with your volunteers
Make things easy: Make the process a well-oiled machine for your volunteers. My group of volunteers predominantly come to my home where everything is set up like an assembly line. This way, we are able to chat and connect as we put together the packages of lipsticks and prepare them for shipping to women’s domestic violence shelters. To thank my volunteers, I tell them at the end of work each day, “Every lipstick you touched today is going to positively impact the life of a domestic violence victim, so you can really feel good about yourself.”
Be mindful of their time: Let your volunteers know in advance how many hours they will be volunteering that day. People live busy lives, so give them the courtesy of being able to plan their day around the hours you will need them to work, and stick to that schedule. Creating an organized workflow will also ensure they can be in and out, and get on with the rest of their day.
Nurture relationships: Stay connected to your volunteers outside of their work for your nonprofit. Ask about children, grandchildren, birthdays, and other tidbits about their lives. Celebrate their milestones to nurture those relationships. I make an effort to pick up on my volunteers’ personal milestones to let them know how much they are valued. Sometimes I ask if someone wants to meet for lunch or a coffee to catch up. It’s important to cultivate relationships with your volunteers, since they are a significant part of the success of your nonprofit organization.
Leverage your network to grow your network
Grow your volunteers with current volunteers: Ask your volunteers to tap into their own networks through their clubs, hobbies, church groups, synagogues, classes, and organizations they engage with. Your current volunteers are feeders for more volunteers. You will need to continually grow your network of volunteers so you can rotate their schedules, and not become a burden on any of their lives.
Speak for exposure: While growing my network, I looked up every local women’s organization I could find and pitched myself as a speaker on the topic of domestic violence. I offered to speak free of charge with one condition: I requested that all attendees bring a new lipstick to donate. Some of the women really went the extra mile, doing their own lipstick drives and bringing multiple lipsticks with them to my speaking events.
Ask for party donations: My husband and I used to throw a big Super Bowl party every year, and we began asking everyone to bring a new lipstick with them to the parties we hosted. Soon after, others who attended our annual party started doing lipstick collections on our behalf, when they hosted their own events.
Leverage local media: Prior to hiring a publicist, I reached out to hyper-local and local newsletters and newspapers, asking them to donate space for us in their publications. This ensured that we didn’t have to pay for ads. These local publications would grant us small ad spaces, about the size of a business card, to get the word out about our need for lipstick donations.
Connect with local high schools and universities
Look for student volunteers: Many high schools encourage or even require their students to complete a certain amount of volunteer hours as part of their curriculum and diploma requirements. Colleges and universities often have similar requirements for volunteer or internship hours. Reach out to guidance counselors at local high schools and advisors at local colleges and universities, introduce your nonprofit organization and express your need for volunteers who’s educational or career paths are in line with your mission. Have them share with you what is required to become a recommended nonprofit organization for volunteer hours and/or internships for college credit.
Hire college students: In addition to working with student volunteers, we have conserved resources by hiring college students to help us create and promote content for social media in exchange for a small stipend. Hiring college students for projects also allows you to tap into the latest trends that might otherwise not be on your radar. It helps them build up their resume, and you become an employment reference for them when they graduate and hit the job market.
Leverage campus influence: The social influence of sororities and fraternities on college campuses cannot be overstated. Greek organizations were the original on-campus influencers and they still carry weight within their campus eco-systems. As an example, I have worked with local sorority chapters, asking them to do lipstick drives for us.
Think outside the box, both on and offline
When COVID happened, no one was buying lipsticks and my ship began to sink. I reached out to social media influencers, specifically beauty YouTubers. Through this outreach, I managed to spark the interest of a particular beauty YouTuber who connected me with her own network of influencers, creating long tentacles in that space.
Announce what you need from people on social media and don’t be vague. Let people know that every donation counts. Hold digital drives. I hold digital lipstick drives through my Facebook and Instagram pages.
Give people plenty of time to do what you ask them to do. We announced our Valentine’s Day lipstick drive in November, making subsequent announcements weekly about our goal of reaching 1,000 lipsticks by Valentine’s Day. People will want to help you reach your goals, especially because people want to feel impactful. They want to help and make a difference in the lives of others. Allowing people to make positive change in the world through small gestures inspires people to action. Giving them a long lead time allows them to integrate their involvement into when it is convenient for them.
Don’t quit or be discouraged by the word “No.” You will come across that “Yes,” and it will be worth waiting for. Perseverance is key.
Don’t give other people’s opinions more weight than your own. Receiving negative energy and skepticism can deflate or make you doubt your own creative ideas. Be protective of your ideas as you would a newborn baby, until they are more developed, and break big ideas into small actionable plans. When you have accomplished each goal, pat yourself on the back and then bump it up a notch to the next milestone.
Sheryl Kurland is a Domestic Violence Victim’s Advocate and the founder of Find Your Fabulosity, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that collects and donates new lipsticks to domestic violence victims across the U.S., through a network of 300 domestic violence women’s shelters. To date, the nonprofit has donated more than 100,000 new lipsticks to women healing from domestic violence. Find Your Fabulosity is an all-volunteer organization. Visit findyourfabulosity.org.
Thank you,
Allison Kugel
Full Scale Media
akugel@fullscalemedia.com
516.509.7787
