Money coming in
Income Streams
A catalog of 42 ways nonprofits earn money, scored against your actual organization rather than presented as a list of good ideas.
The catalog
Forty-two income streams across five categories. The catalog is fixed and the same for everybody; what is specific to you is which ones the software recommends and which ones you choose to build.
| Category | Streams | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Contributed Revenue | 14 | Donors, grants, and giving programs, restricted or unrestricted. |
| Contracted & Institutional | 6 | Government, school, and institutional contracts. |
| Earned Revenue | 15 | Fees, services, products, and memberships you control. |
| Asset-Based & Investment | 4 | Property, endowment, and royalty income. |
| Enterprise & Partnership | 3 | Social enterprise sales and revenue-sharing partnerships. |
How the recommendations work
Every stream is evaluated against your real organizational profile and scored for fit and for readiness. Two things about the scoring are worth knowing before you read a result.
- Mission alignment is weighed before revenue potential. A stream that would earn well and pull you away from your purpose is scored down, not up.
- It is capacity aware. A recommendation that assumes staff you do not have is a recommendation that wastes a year.
Choosing what to build
Read the recommendations, then open two or three that interest you.
Each stream carries a definition, how it actually works, what it costs to start, and how quickly it pays.
Compare candidates side by side rather than one at a time.
Cost, speed to revenue, and difficulty are the three that decide whether an idea survives contact with your calendar.
Add the ones you commit to, so they become part of your portfolio rather than a list you read once.
If the stream you choose is a service people pay for, and you want the price to vary by what somebody can afford, that is what the Sliding Scale Builder is for.
Read next
- Sliding Scale BuilderPricing a service by what people can afford, built from real federal poverty figures and your program's true cost rather than from instinct.
- Revenue PortfolioEvery source of money you have, recorded with how certain it is, so the total never quietly mixes a signed contract with a hopeful guess.
- Your organization profileThe record every other tool reads from, why filling it in is the highest-value hour you will spend, and what each part of it unlocks.
Something here wrong, missing, or out of date? Email support@fundwisr.ai and tell us which chapter. Documentation defects are treated as defects.