Why I Chose to Make Where’s Your Heart? Non-Profit

About a month ago, I scrib­bled some notes on a piece of paper that were the out­line of this post. Need­less to say, I’ve for­got­ten how the flow went… And, I apol­o­gize for not hav­ing the time to rewrite this impor­tant post.

Then, this evening I saw a post titled “7 Rea­sons Not to Start a NEW Non Profit Orga­ni­za­tion” posted by Step-by-Step Fundrais­ing and I new I had to write this post. Now.

I dis­agree with their post. In fact, I dis­agree strongly.

Now, per­haps I don’t know enough about non-profits or phil­an­thropy to be deterred. You see, a year ago I knew noth­ing about non-profits. I had no idea that by April 15th 2009 I’d have this busi­ness plan bust­ing from my brain and that a com­pul­sion like my heart was going to explode would com­pel me to cre­ate Where’s Your Heart? Foun­da­tion. Alone.

That’s right. I’ve the help of my friends. But, it’s my vision, my heart, and to date, my effort. I’m grate­ful for the sup­port of some very won­der­ful peo­ple who’ve pro­vided me advice, and con­tacts. I’ve paid lawyers and accoun­tants and artists. But, I’m a team of one.

Wait a minute… I think I lost you. Let me back up.

That’s right. I said “busi­ness plan” and non-profit in the same para­graph. Of course. If we want to be a going con­cern (and we do), we need a plan. And so we have one.

I’m impressed by all the com­pa­nies who are get­ting on the socially con­scious band­wagon. There are many and they’re mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. I vis­ited a cus­tomer (in my day job) and they no longer used paper cups for cof­fee or water (and thank­fully, no indi­vid­ual bot­tles for drink­ing water!).

Look at what Star­bucks is doing and you start to get the idea that being socially con­scious is good busi­ness.

But, what hap­pens when it’s not?

These com­pa­nies, noble as their efforts are, have a mis­sion. Their mis­sion is to make money. Believe me, I sup­port their efforts. And, I’m grate­ful they’re try­ing to be respon­si­ble about it. But in the end, their pur­pose is to make money. When being socially con­scious is no longer good for busi­ness, many will regress (hope­fully not fully revert) to old behaviors.

Where’s Your Heart?‘s pur­pose is to improve people’s lives through altru­is­tic liv­ing. The only way to pro­tect that pur­pose was to incor­po­rate as a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion. Any other way would risk the slide towards a shared pur­pose of “mak­ing money”.

By the laws of the United States of Amer­ica, noth­ing can ever deter us from that mis­sion. Being a non-profit com­pany means I can never raise money by sell­ing shares in the com­pany. It lim­its how I can exit “the busi­ness”. These laws pro­tect peo­ple who donate money and time to make sure the time and money go to our char­i­ta­ble pur­pose. It means my books are a mat­ter of pub­lic record; and any­one read­ing this is meant to be allowed to see them (not much to them right now, but in the future, I plan to post our finan­cial results on our website).

Our char­i­ta­ble mis­sion comes first, and the only way to make sure it stays that way is to form the com­pany as a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion. Period.

That said, we need to sur­vive. And, to do so, we’ll need to raise money. We’ll raise money through our events, and over time hope to have a vari­ety of events. We’re start­ing with Cleanse for Your Cause™, but stay tuned.

When I first approached lawyers to get incor­po­rated and file for non-profit sta­tus I heard the same thing over and over… Sounds like a good idea, but… so many peo­ple have a good idea but for­get that they need money to keep a com­pany going. You need to make sure you think past your ideas to change the world, and make sure you have a plan to keep the com­pany funded.

In gen­eral, I let these lawyers know that I’ve got an MBA in Inter­na­tional Busi­ness & Tech­nol­ogy (very appro­pri­ate for our mis­sion), but that I’ve also worked for star­tups most of my career. I know the impor­tance of cash flow. It doesn’t mat­ter how good  your prod­uct, or your mis­sion, is. Fact is, you’ve gotta sur­vive first.

Then I approached some of my friends in the tech­nol­ogy world. To an indi­vid­ual, they gave me sug­ges­tions on how to meet my char­i­ta­ble goals, but keep the tech­nol­ogy sep­a­rate and for-profit. I get it, they think about how to make money. I see that. But, in my own brand of bull-headedness I wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose focus. Two com­pa­nies would require that I split my time. Frankly, I also felt that doing it that way would appear like the Foun­da­tion would be a front for the com­mer­cial enterprise.

That’s not what we’re about. Laser focus baby… on our char­i­ta­ble mis­sion. My dream is to cre­ate a com­mu­nity where peo­ple value and relate to altru­is­tic activ­i­ties. Where those activ­i­ties cre­ate this pos­i­tive energy in our lives, which then gets nur­tured through our online com­mu­nity (inte­grated with Face­book), and then shared with oth­ers to set that energy free. Sounds wacky, I know. But, I’m going to live that dream, and not risk fail­ure by liv­ing two dreams at the same time.

That said, we’re an inter­net com­pany. No ques­tion. We’re about the online-social com­mu­nity. We have unique-differentiators from oth­ers out there, and just like many tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies, we’re incor­po­rated in Delaware because they have a lot of legal prior-art that will pro­tect our “business”.

I like to think I’m set­ting an exam­ple of a new type of socially con­scious orga­ni­za­tion. Per­haps, I’m a lit­tle extreme. I’m doing so to make a point. I think things need to change, and I’m putting my skills & pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence behind Where’s Your Heart? to make the change I wish to hap­pen. By cre­at­ing the com­pany as a non-profit, we get some ben­e­fits and have some restric­tions. I think they’ll bal­ance in our favor in the end; and we’ll also pro­tect our char­i­ta­ble pur­pose and set an exam­ple for others.

This post is already long enough, so I’m going to save my rebut­tal of the post men­tioned above for my next post. In the mean­time, if you are intrigued by my pas­sion, or the way I’m set­ting this com­pany up to set an exam­ple, I’d love it if you became our fan on Face­book, tell us what you think (by com­ment­ing below, or writ­ing on our wall), and share us with your friends!