Good work p1 - Military - Start Your Own Business - Military Times Edge

If you want to do some good in the world, you can do more than just write a check to your favorite charitable organization. You can be that organization. Just ask Navy SEAL Lt. Eric Greitens.

When Greitens left active duty for the reserves in 2007, he founded The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps wounded and disabled veterans find meaningful work. The program pays injured vets a salary while they work with a local service organization for three or six months, and provides resources to help them develop long-term plans for education and employment.

But the veterans in the program are not the only ones to find meaningful work through the nonprofit. Developing The Mission Continues has been “incredibly satisfying,” Greitens said.

Which is not to say it’s been easy. Setting up a charitable organization takes extensive networking, detailed bookkeeping and constant fundraising. It’s all the struggle of starting your own business without the lure of a fat paycheck. But veterans who want to keep serving say the reward is more than worth the work.

Getting started

Of course, you really start with an interest, a passion, an idea. But how do you start making the idea real?

Although the specifics depend on your goal, you can count on doing at least two things: filling out paperwork and spending money — probably your own.

A nonprofit must be recognized by the IRS and by the state in order to earn tax-exempt status, explained Stan Hutton, co-author of Nonprofit Kit for Dummies, 3rd Edition. The IRS charges between $400 and $850 to file its Form 1023, depending on anticipated revenues. At the state level, any new enterprise must be incorporated, which may require naming a board of directors and writing up bylaws. Rules vary by state; the cost ranges from zero to a few hundred dollars.

Completing the IRS paperwork was an “oh-my-gosh-what-are-we-doing” moment for Addie and Greg Zinone, founders of the nonprofit Pro vs. GI Joe. They had a great concept — to give overseas troops some fun by pitting them against professional athletes in video game competitions — but little experience in nonprofit work.

“This was an idea, and when you apply for that tax-exempt status you have to have a very defined mission,” said Addie, an Army Reserve sergeant. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to execute.”

As they found out, executing usually requires money out of your own pocket, at least until you break through the Catch-22 of fundraising: Donors want to see effective work before they give money, but you need their money in order to do effective work.

The Zinones got started with Addie’s re-enlistment bonus and savings from her combat pay. They kept it going for a while on her salary; while Greg worked full-time on Pro vs. GI Joe, Addie kept her job in public relations. But they nearly reached the breaking point before the nonprofit got enough outside funds to support itself.

“We were going to give it up because it was really affecting our livelihood,” Addie said. She estimates they had spent $70,000 of their own money on the organization.

Greitens also tapped his combat pay to get The Mission Continues off the ground, pooling his $3,500 with two friends’ disability checks and $10,000 from a donor. That money went toward paying for the first few veterans’ work experiences.

Initial successes drew new donors, but Greitens spent two years “sleeping on an air mattress,” as he put it, before the group began drawing enough support to pay him a salary. Today there are six full-timers and one part-timer on the payroll. Putting up his own money showed donors and other service groups that he was serious, which was essential to getting the help he needed.

Building support

You will need help, of course, whether it’s from volunteers, other nonprofits or corporations — or all of the above.

A good strategy for building support, Hutton said, is to picture a bull’s-eye and to work outward from the center.

“The first thing to do is to go to people who are close to you and who are impacted by the programs you are providing,” he said. That means family and friends, then board members, then the community, starting with those affected by the work of the organization.

For Adam Burke, founder of Veterans Farm, nothing cements support like a first-hand look at the work of the organization, which helps wounded soldiers heal through “horticulture therapy.”

“We have an eight-acre farm in the middle of a forest,” he said. “If I can get [volunteers] out to the farm and show them what we are doing, they are hooked.”

Having hooked them, Burke said, the trick is to keep them engaged. “You have to treat each volunteer like their contribution is special. I’m always thankful for everything they give, and I try to let them know that,” he said.

Retired Marine Maj. Gen. T.S. Jones tapped his military network for help when he founded Outdoor Odyssey, a nonprofit that trains high school students to mentor younger children. Looking for pro bono legal advice, he contacted other retirees to find someone with experience.

“The legal advice was very helpful,” he said. “When you have someone who has already jumped through whatever administrative hoops there might be, it makes a big difference.”

Jones also turned to his network to build a board for Outdoor Odyssey, starting with his personal contacts, then moving outward. Board members might not be involved in the day-to-day operations, but they should help in other ways, he said.

“They ought to be able to bring you resources, first by bringing grants and contributors to you, and especially by introducing you to points of contact,” Jones said.

Making partners

If Addie Zinone has learned one thing, it’s not to underestimate the value of a good contact.

Just a few months after she and Greg hatched the idea for Pro vs. GI Joe, she was called up for a second deployment to the Middle East. There, in a USO center in Kuwait, she figured out how to turn their brainstorm into something more.

“I saw troops playing video games — and it dawned on me that this is how we can execute overseas,” she said.

Zinone told the center director about their idea and gave him an outline of their plan; he forwarded it to headquarters and got the ball rolling. It still took months to hammer out a partnership, but that connection with USO made everything else possible. Under the partnership, Pro vs. GI Joe plans all the events, and USO centers around the world host and help to execute them. Without USO’s international footprint, the logistics would be unworkable, Zinone said.

Relationships with other nonprofits bring resources and credibility, but they aren’t always easy to forge in the competition for limited charitable funds.

“[Nonprofits] can be very competitive because there are so many, fighting over so little,” explained Burke, whose Veterans Farm works under the larger umbrella of Work Vessels for Veterans.

It helps if you can show that a combined effort really will further the agenda of all involved. “I have gone to [other nonprofits] and said: ‘Let’s work together with each of us doing our part in one bigger project, rather than competing over lots of little things,’” Burke said.

Forging relationships with corporate donors can be even harder, especially if you don’t have a background in business.

Corporations want numbers, Zinone said. “They love what we do, but ... they’re asking us questions that we don’t have the answers to. We don’t even have the tools to gather that information.” She sometimes found herself wishing she had taken business classes in college.

It took two years for Pro vs. GI Joe to land its first corporate sponsor. First, a contact hooked them up with AirTran Airways, which decided to sponsor air travel for the staff and the families of the troops involved. Then Activision agreed to sponsor two events, and based on their success, entered into a yearlong partnership.

What finally cracked the code? “Getting to the right people and proving ourselves,” said Zinone. “We’re getting to a place where people are coming to us because they want to partner with us.”

Greitens also found that money and support build on themselves.

Like the Zinones, he used his own investment to create a record of success. With a few veterans in the program, “I could show potential donors where their money would go. I could show them a record of fiscal responsibility,” he said.

His fundraising efforts started small. With pitches to local civic groups, he began to draw donations ranging from $5 to $500. With this tangible support in hand, he began asking private donors for $10,000 gifts that would support full fellowships. Eventually, he landed his biggest gift to date, a $300,000 pledge over three years from the Draper Richards Foundation.

Greitens described the fundraising process as, first and foremost, a matter of credibility. “The most important thing you can do when you are starting a nonprofit organization is to show great results,” he said. “There are a lot of great ideas out there, but people don’t fund ideas. They want to fund leaders who are getting results.”

Those results inspire others — and Greitens himself.

“I see a veteran who has spent two years just hanging around their house, who now is a citizen leader in the community, who feels self-confident again. The fact that we are changing lives is an incredible source of satisfaction.”