7 Pro Bono Resources for Nonprofits | Starting A Nonprofit

When you're first starting a non-profit, it can  feel like a big challenge getting the help that you need! But many pro bono resources exist  to help with anything from legal to marketing support and more! So in this video I'm going to  talk through seven places where you might find pro bono support for your new or growing  nonprofit organization. let's go! [Music] Welcome or welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie  Smith and I'm a non-profit founder and executive director who also makes these vi

deos here on  YouTube to help people like you who want to make a difference - whether that's through starting  and growing a non-profit, social enterprise, socially conscious business, or other ways.  I hope that you find this video helpful and useful. As always don't forget to give it a like  And subscribe to my channel for more content like this! Also if you're in the process of starting a  non-profit or developing a sustainable fundraising plan check out my website foundertofulltime.com  wher

e I have some online trainings that might help you out getting pro bono Services can be a really  beneficial way to get professional level help at no cost for your non-profit organization and in a  minute here I'm going to share those seven places where you'll be able to look for pro bono help  that will hopefully be a good fit to help you meet one of your organization's needs but before  I get into that I do want to share a quick tip this is something that has really helped me make  the most ou

t of pro bono projects and Partnerships so the idea of getting pro bono Health can  feel like a dream someone with professional level experience helping your organization as a  volunteer donating their time and their services but one of the biggest factors that can cause a  pro bono partnership or pro bono project to flop is a lack of clarity around the expectations  of the outcomes for the project or the lack of clarity around the specific needs that your  organization has for the pro bono proj

ect so I highly recommend before you even get started with  your search for pro bono help you create a scope of work basically a document that outlines your  specific your specific deliverables that you're hoping for whether it's a complete business plan  or an outline for a marketing campaign or answers to specific legal questions make sure you get  really clear in your own mind and put it on paper so that you can communicate clearly to potential  pro bono supporters exactly what you need and t

hat will help them understand if they have the time  available to help you in the way that's going to be most effective for you now some pro bono  projects are going to be more straightforward than others and some might be more nuanced like  those marketing or fundraising types of support projects so here's a quick checklist to make sure  that you're including everything that you need to in an outline or scope of work to make sure that  your pro bono helper really understands what you need first

what is your ultimate goal what is  the specific deliverable and by that I mean the product that will result from the project is it  a document that contains certain things is it a marketing plan is it a a budget document like what  is the actual tangible thing that will result from the project second what is the purpose of this  pro bono project what will having the help from a pro bono professional allow you to do for your  organization and by extension your organization's mission to impact t

he community third what  is your timeline for this project is there a specific deadline or time frame that you need  the project completed by and finally if it's a Consulting based type of pro bono project for the  specific questions that you need answered or if it's a other type of project or the specific  skill sets the professional needs to have in order to Be an Effective pro bono helper for  your organization okay now that we have that Foundation out of the way and hopefully you're  feeling

prepared to provide clear instructions to a pro bono helper once you find them let's get  into those seven places where you might be able to find the perfect pro bono professional volunteer  to help you out with what you need the first place you can search for a pro bono helper is through  online line pro bono or volunteer platforms these are websites where causes such as yours who need  help with a specific project whether it's pro bono project or other type of volunteer need can look  for peo

ple to help them out whether by posting their volunteer needs or being matched by the  websites um the organization behind the website to a professional that will help you so a couple  of examples of this include the Taproot Foundation or Catchafire these two organizations  and websites they focus on connecting organizations with specific pro bono help on  professional projects like marketing and legal Etc another resource that is in a lot of local  communities around the world is points of ligh

t this is a network of organizations that focus on  recruiting volunteers to support other non-profits and you can go to the points of light website  and click on the global Network map and see the map of where all of these organizations are  located to see which ones might be closest to you in your city the second place you can look for  pro bono help is local universities and colleges there are a lot of students undergrad graduate and  professors who are often willing to lend support to non-pr

ofits in their Community sometimes  this can even be done for academic credit so there are two ways you can start looking for  help at a university or college the first is through student clubs you can usually find a  list of student organizations on a College's website to see if there are any that are focused  on volunteering for non-profits or there are even some that are focused on providing professional  or academic level support for specific projects for non-profits I know in my local commu

nity  there's College clubs where students focus on providing marketing and accounting advice to  non-profits so that's pretty cool they set up the club exclusively to help non-profits with these  types of projects and maybe they can help you too the second way is through professors you can  find a class that teaches the topic that might relate to the specific needs you have for example  a marketing class and sometimes the professor will be able to work with you to identify an awesome  student w

ho's looking for real world experience developing something related to the class topic or  sometimes they can even make it a class project so you get the benefit of all of the students working  collaboratively together now definitely don't discount students because they often have lots  of job experience under their belts even while they're attending school or sometimes you have  non-traditional students who went to work and then went back to school so you can really expect  a broad range of ski

ll levels and understanding of a topic from students at your local College  the third place that you could possibly look for pro bono help is through your local professional  associations so there are often networking and training and learning groups in each City  that focus on specific professional areas um you'll see clubs for marketing professionals  like the American Marketing Association I think is the the group AMA look for one of those in your  city there's also a group called SHRM, that'

s s-h-r-m, that's the Society of human resource  managers I believe and so if you're looking for someone with a focus on human resources to help  answer some questions for you or help you with the human resources related pro bono project that  in my opinion would be a great place to reach out to see who's available or maybe um you know the  the club's leadership can recommend someone great for you the fourth place you can look for pro  bono help is legal aid organizations I'm going to call out t

wo types specifically the first is your  communities local bar association oftentimes the bar association will have a foundation arm that's  meant to do charitable activities and sometimes that could mean helping identify lawyer lawyers  to help with specific legal matters on a pro bono basis or maybe the foundation itself can offer  help to Pro tip sometimes those foundations even after offer Grant applications so little random  funding opportunity for you and another legal resource is probonop

artner.org they are a website  that specifically offers legal help to non-profits and oftentimes non-profits in a startup phase so  if you were at the part of your organization's development where you need to still file your  paperwork and develop all that stuff they might be able to find someone to help you out the fifth  place you might be able to find pro bono help is through corporate volunteer or pro bono programs  also called skills-based volunteering these are all the rage companies just

love to find ways to  have their employees volunteer that let them use their professional skill sets or develop their  professional skills sets so these skills-based or pro bono volunteer programs at companies have  really taken off in the last I'd say decade-ish so you can definitely check those out you can look  for companies that have professionals that offer the skill set you need like again a marketing  company or a law firm Etc um and see if they have a social responsibility program where

they  already have it structured to offer skills-based support if not in my opinion there's no harm  just asking someone if if their company would be willing to help with something like that you  never know they could say yes another program that's sort of embedded in corporate volunteering  and corporate pro bono pro programs is called common impact the common impact is a non-profit  that specifically works with companies in order to help their employees do skills-based and pro  bono volunteeri

ng so sometimes you can link up with them to get specific help on a project that  you have a need for just a quick disclaimer about common impact in some organizations like them  depending on the size or scale of the project there sometimes could be a fee or a small fee  that the non-profits have to pay in order to get the project matched and get some support for the  managing the project along the way and this fee is usually you know a good Roi you know because you  would have had to probably p

ay professional a lot more than the cost of that fee but it is important  to know that sometimes that's a thing that comes with these programs the sixth place you might find  pro bono help is other non-profits whose mission is to support other non-profits now this is kind  of like the common impact example I just gave but I'm going to get a little bit more into um the  details here because these are nonprofits that are not specifically connected to corporate volunteer  programs so um two example

s come to mind the first is called 48in48 - you can look them up. Their  specific mission is to help non-profits build websites at no cost to them so they rally all  these volunteers and the volunteers help build a website and then the nonprofit gets a free website  so that's something you might be able to check out if a website is your specific need another place  you might be able to look for help is um through centers for non-profits I will leave the link to  find you the center for non-profi

t that's in your community there's the centers for nonprofits  are located all around the country in the USA um and these are membership organizations that  offer various types of support to non-profits to include some pro bono services so that's something  to check out and as a disclaimer sometimes a membership fee might be needed but it's usually  pretty reasonable the ones I've seen are always less than a couple hundred bucks and the seventh  and final place I'm going to talk about today to g

et pro bono health is your own network you  can tap into all of the people around you you never know what amazing skill sets people have  until you ask so once again I recommend making sure you have that very clear outline and scope  of work of what you're looking for and then ask around put your needs on LinkedIn put it out in  Facebook groups relevant to the needs topics you never know who's going to be able to help out  just make sure that they can look through that outline of what you're loo

king for and have a  conversation with you about what your needs are so that you can make sure it's a good fit so has  your non-profit or a non-profit that you've worked with before had experience getting pro bono help  I would love to hear about your experience what went well what would you do differently  this time what made it really effective Etc share in the comments below once again if  you are in the process of starting a non-profit or developing your fundraising plan check out  my websit

e foundertofulltime.com for those online trainings I also have a newsletter where  I send out information tips and sometimes funding opportunities that you can join look at the link  below this video as well for that and finally I have a group on Facebook called Change the World  or Bust where we've got - I want to say we're coming up on 5,000 folks from around the world  - it's amazing who are all making a difference in their own way and are talking to each other to  encourage each other and ge

t advice along the way so come join us there and I hope to see you once  again this is Amber Melanie Smith signing off