Growing
Hybrid Model Intelligence
Whether to change how you are structured in order to do something commercial, with ten options ranked, two of which mean do not restructure.
The question, asked properly
This tool answers one question: should this organization change the way it is structured in order to do a commercial thing, or should the commercial thing simply happen inside the nonprofit?
The ten options
Five of the ten keep everything inside the nonprofit. They are listed first here for the same reason they are ranked seriously in the software: they are usually the right answer, and they are almost always the cheaper one.
Inside the nonprofit:
- Keep inside the nonprofit. Run the activity as part of existing operations with no change of structure.
- Fee-for-service inside the nonprofit. Charge for a service you already deliver.
- Social enterprise inside the nonprofit. A mission-aligned business run as a program.
- Licensing. License your curriculum, model, technology or framework to others.
- Commercial partnership. Achieve the objective through a partner rather than building or forming anything.
The remaining options involve forming or restructuring an entity, starting with a nonprofit-owned LLC. Each carries a rising cost in complexity, governance burden, compliance burden, and money to start, and the tool scores all four rather than presenting structures as equivalent choices.
What this tool will not do
The Hybrid Model Readiness Assessment is a fifty-question, ten-category instrument in the Diagnostic Center, and it needs Core or above. Take it before you spend money on advice, so that the advice starts from a real picture.
Read next
- Income StreamsA catalog of 42 ways nonprofits earn money, scored against your actual organization rather than presented as a list of good ideas.
- Scaling IntelligenceGrowing a model that works, with the financial projections, milestones and scenarios that decide whether it survives being bigger.
- Diagnostic CenterAll thirteen diagnostics, when to use each one, and how re-running them over time turns a score into a trend.
Something here wrong, missing, or out of date? Email support@fundwisr.ai and tell us which chapter. Documentation defects are treated as defects.