Passion Isn’t a Business Plan: What 36 Years in Nonprofits Taught Me About Serving

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

In 1990, I didn’t know anything about organizational sustainability. I didn’t know how to read a financial statement, develop a revenue strategy, manage cash flow, satisfy government reporting requirements, build a board, supervise employees, negotiate a contract, or think about succession. I only knew I wanted to serve.

That was enough to get me started, but it wouldn’t have been enough to keep me going.

Thirty-six years later, as National Nonprofit Day is observed (August 17), I find myself thinking less about celebrating nonprofit organizations and more about what we should be asking of them, and, perhaps more importantly, what we should be teaching the people who feel called to create them.

My journey began as a young man volunteering with the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival Committee in New York. I was surrounded by people thinking seriously about Black history, culture, poverty, housing, political participation, justice, and community. Something awakened in me there. Service stopped being an occasional activity and became part of how I understood my responsibility in the world. In the proposed book I am writing, The Business of Serving, I describe this awakening as the moment when I began understanding that service could become a life’s work.

What I didn’t understand then was what it would cost to keep serving. I mean that literally. Passion has expenses.

The father who needs legal assistance doesn’t need your passion alone. He may need an attorney. The family facing eviction may need emergency financial assistance. The child who struggles in school needs a qualified tutor with sufficient stability in their own life to show up every Tuesday afternoon. A community program needs insurance, technology, accounting, payroll, evaluation, transportation, facilities, data systems, background checks, communications, training, supervision, and someone who understands what happens when funding does not arrive on the day everyone expected it.

Every mission eventually meets a spreadsheet.

That doesn’t make the mission less sacred. It makes stewardship more serious.

One of the central arguments in the current draft of The Business of Serving is that there is a common misconception that authentic service must somehow be accompanied by suffering. We romanticize the struggling nonprofit founder who takes no salary, works from the kitchen table, maxes out personal credit cards, convinces friends to volunteer, and keeps everything together through force of personality. We sometimes treat organizational poverty as evidence of moral purity.

I have never believed that.

I’ve seen too many good people with extraordinary ideas run out of money before they ran out of need. I’ve watched organizations begin with fire and disappear because nobody built the fireplace. Passion can ignite an organization, but infrastructure sustains that energy long enough for it to become useful.

That’s why I call it the business of serving.

What’s Behind the Process of Securing Nonprofit Status

The distinction matters even more today because becoming a federally recognized charitable organization has become substantially easier for many small organizations in recent years. In July 2014, the IRS introduced Form 1023-EZ as a streamlined route for qualifying smaller organizations seeking recognition under Section 501(c)(3). The IRS described the new form as a two-page alternative to the much longer traditional Form 1023. Today, eligibility generally includes organizations expecting no more than $50,000 in annual gross receipts and holding no more than $250,000 in assets, along with other restrictions.

There was good reason for reform. The IRS was dealing with a backlog of more than 75,000 exemption applications in 2014, some of which had been waiting more than a year. Streamlining reduced burdens on small organizations and allowed the government to focus more attention on complicated applications.

But something else happened that also deserves reflection.

The old process was cumbersome. Anybody who completed the long Form 1023 years ago remembers that it made you think. You had to explain what you were going to do, how you were going to do it, how the organization would be governed, where the money would come from, what the money would pay for, and how the organization’s activities were connected to its charitable purpose.

Many people sought legal or accounting assistance simply because the process demanded a level of sophistication they didn’t yet possess. These services could be expensive and frustrating, but there was an unintended education built into the difficulty: You learned that becoming a nonprofit wasn’t the same thing as having a good idea.

When Form 1023-EZ first appeared, the National Taxpayer Advocate raised concerns that the application relied heavily on applicants’ attestation of their eligibility rather than requiring substantial supporting documentation. The form has been revised since then, and the current version requires, among other things, a brief description of an organization’s mission or most significant activities. Still, its fundamental purpose remains what its name says: streamlining.

I’m not arguing that we should return to bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. I’m arguing that when we remove a learning barrier, we should replace the education that barrier accidentally provided.

A determination letter from the IRS does not mean you know how to run an organization. It only means you received a determination letter from the IRS.

It doesn’t guarantee that donors will believe in your cause, that foundations will fund it, or that government will contract with you. It doesn’t guarantee that your board will govern effectively, that your programs will produce results, that your books will be accurate, that your employees will remain, that your communications will reach anyone, or that the community you intend to serve actually wants what you have decided to provide.

Tax-exempt status isn’t a business plan.

Similarly, nonprofit status isn’t a certificate of virtue.

That distinction may be harder to see because social purpose is no longer confined to the nonprofit sector. Businesses, entrepreneurs, corporations, social enterprises, philanthropic foundations, faith institutions, community networks, and individual citizens can all organize to solve social problems. The question for a founder shouldn’t be, “Which structure makes me look most committed to the cause?” The question should be, “Which structure gives this work the greatest opportunity to accomplish what I am trying to accomplish?”

Nonprofit and for-profit organizations are legally different. Their rules around ownership, governance, taxes, charitable purpose, and distribution of earnings are distinct. But they share an unforgiving operating truth: Both must acquire more resources than they consume if they expect to remain alive.

A for-profit calls much of that revenue. A nonprofit may refer to these resources as grants, contracts, contributions, sponsorships, earned income, individual giving, or philanthropy. The vocabulary changes. The electricity company does not care. Neither does payroll.

This becomes particularly difficult when the people you’re committed to serving aren’t considered especially attractive to funders.

I know something about that.

The Economics of Serving Unpopular Causes

For more than two decades, Fathers Incorporated (FI) has worked specifically with fathers, including Black fathers, fathers of color, nonresident fathers, unmarried fathers, fathers returning from incarceration, fathers navigating child support, and men trying to repair complicated relationships with their children and co-parents. This work sits inside what The Business of Serving calls “Serving the Overlooked: The Challenge of Unpopular Causes.” Not every cause receives equal philanthropic enthusiasm. 

Fatherhood engagement has often required us to convince people not only that our approach works, but that the people themselves are worth the investment. This changes the economics of serving.

When the public doesn’t immediately recognize your constituency as sympathetic, your storytelling has to be stronger. Your evidence has to be credible. Your relationships have to be deeper. Your financial strategy has to be more disciplined. Your organization must sometimes survive long enough for society to catch up with the problem you’ve been describing all along.

That’s why sustainability is not separate from equity. If organizations serving overlooked populations are perpetually fragile, then the people those organizations serve are perpetually one funding decision away from losing support.

Over the years, FI has operated through economic downturns, COVID-19, changing administrations, shifting federal priorities, fleeting philanthropic interests, the loss of key personnel, new technology, and evolving public conversations about fathers, families, race, gender, marriage, parenting, and social policy. Our survival has never meant that we predicted every disruption. It meant that we built enough organizational muscle to adapt when disruption came.

That’s business. And business, in this context, isn’t a dirty word.

Every Mission Also Has a Bottom Line

I sometimes make this point through the ministry of Jesus. I don’t mean that the Gospels provide us with a modern organizational chart, but they do show us something about assembling people with different backgrounds, skills, temperaments, and networks around a common mission. There were fishermen who understood work and trade, a tax collector who understood money and government systems, a zealot with political intensity, and very different personalities who had to learn how to function together.

Even sacred work had an operating reality.

Someone had to manage resources. Someone had to secure places to gather. People had to travel. Food had to be acquired. Messages had to move from one community to another. Relationships had to be maintained. The mission didn’t become less spiritual because it required logistics. Why should we believe our missions do?

The person considering starting a nonprofit today should spend at least as much time thinking about infrastructure as thinking about inspiration:

• Who will govern when the founder makes a bad decision? 
• Who understands the finances? 
• What happens if the largest grant disappears next year? 
• What does it actually cost to deliver the service? 
• Can employees be paid competitively? 
• Is there enough unrestricted revenue to keep the organization functioning? 
• How will outcomes be measured? 
• What legal and regulatory responsibilities come with the work? 
• Who handles the things the founder doesn’t know how to do? 
• What happens during the next recession? 
• What happens if another pandemic arrives? 
• What happens when the political administration changes? 
• What happens when the founder gets sick, gets tired, retires, or dies?

And perhaps the hardest question of all: Does this mission require creation of a new organization, or would the cause be better served by joining, strengthening, partnering with, or funding one that already exists? The nonprofit sector could always use more people with a heart to serve; it does not necessarily need more organizations. Sometimes the most responsible expression of your passion isn’t incorporation. Sometimes it’s collaboration.

For those who do build organizations, we have to stop treating the administrative side of service as separate from the mission. Your accountant is part of the mission. Your data manager is part of the mission. Your human resources policies are part of the mission. Your board development is part of the mission. Your insurance is part of the mission. Your fundraising strategy is part of the mission. Your reserves are part of the mission. Your succession plan is part of the mission.

Because every one of those things determines whether you will be there when somebody needs you.

The nonprofit world often celebrates beginnings. The launch. The ribbon cutting. The announcement. The first grant. The beautiful website. The social media post declaring that a new organization has been born. But after 36 years in this work, I am increasingly interested in the organizations that are still standing.

Still serving after the founder’s excitement wears off.

Still paying employees when the funding environment gets tight.

Still answering the phone when the issue has fallen out of political fashion.

Still protecting the integrity of the work when money comes with pressure.

Still capable of saying no to funding that would pull the organization away from its mission.

Still learning.

Still adapting.

Still useful.

The measure of service isn’t simply how passionately we begin. It’s whether we build something strong enough to remain present when the people we promised to serve need us most.

Celebrating National Nonprofit Day

On National Nonprofit Day, I celebrate every person who has felt that tug in the heart that says something in this world needs to change, and I’m willing to help change it.

But I also want to offer the lesson I wish someone had placed in my hands in 1990: Honor the calling enough to build the infrastructure around it.

Learn governance. Learn finance. Learn fundraising. Learn compliance. Learn leadership. Learn evaluation. Learn how to hire people who know what you don’t know. Learn how to preserve cash. Learn how to build relationships before you need something from them. Learn how to survive an economic winter. Learn how to hand the work to somebody else one day.

Your passion deserves that level of preparation.

More importantly, the people you intend to serve deserve it.

There’s something noble about wanting to ride in and save the day, but communities don’t need another knight whose horse dies halfway to the village.

They need institutions capable of making the entire journey.

That’s the business of serving.