Nonprofit organizations are founded to serve a community that has a deep need, which isn’t currently being met. And for most entrepreneurs, their mission is personal.

For me, growing up in a poverty-stricken north-west Atlanta neighborhood, I had one goal throughout my childhood and into my young adult years – to play baseball and break my personal cycle of poverty. Having that personal experience shaped who I am and created my passion for helping others achieve the same success.

Many nonprofit founders have a personal ‘why’, which is driven by passions, social concerns and a desire to make a meaningful impact. If you’re interested in making a big impact locally, and finding a way to serve the deepest needs in your community, these tips will help you get started.

Find your conviction

Waiting for the perfect time to launch your nonprofit is a considerable barrier for many would-be entrepreneurs. There’s never going to be a perfect time and if you wait, you may never get the chance to actually start.

In reality, the only thing you need to get started is conviction. Everything else you need to be successful you can learn along the way.

Let’s say that you want to start a nonprofit organization to protect trees. Why? If you don’t know the answer, just try. Then ask yourself again. By the time you’ve asked yourself five times, you’ll get to your conviction or ‘why’.

Your conviction needs to be simple. There are enough things about your business that will be challenging and complicated. This is not one of them.

Early on in my nonprofit career, I was passionate about my organization, but I had a harder time explaining that passion. I actually had someone tell me that they didn’t think I understood my own story. That hurt, but it was true.

From that experience, I decided to sit down and write a book about my ‘why’. Because I didn’t understand my own story, I didn’t know how to be clear and concise.

Now, my book proceeds me in a lot of situations when I enter a room. And just having a book is a testament to commitment and discipline. I don’t always have the right words; no-one does. But even if I can’t articulate something in a specific setting, I have visible confidence in my ‘why’.

Communicate your mission

Now that you have your ‘why’, you need to know how to effectively communicate it to others. Culturally, in the Black community, we have a saying: “You feel me?”

When we ask this it’s not to see if someone is listening. It’s “Can you feel me and my passion and what I’m trying to accomplish?” The sooner you can get people to really feel you, the sooner you can make an impact.

If you aren’t doing a great job of communicating what it is you want to change and why, people will quickly decide you don’t have your stuff together. But when you can really help people see and feel your vision along with the greater need, they will give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s the first step to building the support you need to launch your organization.

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Remember, there’s no shame in failing forward. It’s incredibly hard to find success without experiencing some failures along the way. When my wife, Kelli, and I started our nonprofit 17 years ago, we got a lot of nos. It’s normal.

Now, years later, we are starting to get grants from some of those very same people. I’m not saying you should wait 17 years, or even 17 months to make an impact. But the sooner you can get people to believe what you’re saying, it makes a world of difference.

When I started out, I didn’t know how to get emotionally connected with my organization’s mission. Now, it’s second nature. I no longer memorize what I’m going to say to people, it’s now internalized. Practice and get there.

Many nonprofit organizations are passion projects. But one thing you do have to understand about launching one is that it is still a business that must be taken seriously. Your standards have to be clear, expectations for yourself and others have to be high and accountability has to be swift.

It’s all a part of business acumen, and without it your nonprofit won’t survive. No-one wants to partner with someone without clear standards. If you don’t have conviction and the ability to communicate it, you will end up serving the wrong people and hiring the wrong staff. You’ll also be doing it alone.

No-one wants to join a losing team.