Hiii, MS KOKETSO MOETI
I guess you have some formatting issue with the expenses info. in your later https://www.myindigocard.us/ />
In response to What are your estimated expenses for 2020?
Apologies, it seems there was a formatting issue with the expenses info.
To make it easier to ready, here are the 2020 estimated expenses again:
Personnel: $299,282
Administration: $81,056
Project Activities: $221,083
Procurement: $3,879
Total estimated expenses: $605,299
In response to What is your business model?
Hi Njideka, thanks for the question. Our business model is built around transitioning our funding streams away from large funders, towards our goal of being majority funded by small donations from hundreds of thousands of our members. To ease this transition we have in place a successful consulting and service based revenue stream. We have also managed to raise the funds, and received approval from our financial advisors, to purchase a property as our new office. Our plan is to ensure the building is large enough so that we can rent out the space for events and office space, and use the rent as another revenue source.
It’s important to us that revenue streams do not lead us down a path where we drift from our mission, compromise our independence, inclusivity and duty to our members. The heart of our work is serving our members who are from low-income communities, by providing mobile campaign tools, information and campaign coordination.
Many of our members can’t afford to donate, but as we move closer to reaching 1 million members, if just 10% of our members donate a small amount monthly, we will be able to cover almost our entire yearly budget.
To assist with our transition from large grants to mass micro donations, we have in place two revenue strategies built to help cushion this transition, as there are always unanticipated challenges.
The first revenue stream we have developed and have had great success with, is that of offering our services to values aligned NGOs, to work on campaigns that are aligned with our strategy, and issues impacting our members. We provide strategic advice, campaign design, implementation and have built bespoke civic tech tools. This revenue source varies from year to year but is around 35% of our income.
The second revenue stream to help cushion our transition from large donors to being member funded, is income from renting out office space. Our financial advisors have assisted us with a plan around purchasing a property, with enough room to rent office space to values aligned NGOs, as well as for events. We are currently viewing prospective properties.
Our members want to address issues impacting their communities, and our partner organisations want to run better campaigns, and for some, have office space where it’s easy to collaborate with us. These needs underpin our revenue streams.
What is critical is that we are not beholden to funding sources that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. For that reason we are very careful about who we work with, and what we work on. It can be tempting to focus on working with large, well funded partner organisations, at the expense of small community organisations. That’s why we have built a cross-subsidy system where we offer all values aligned partner organisations our services and support, but use a pricing model that ensures inclusivity and mission alignment.
Sustainability is critical for us, as is working to put ourselves out of a job one day, by addressing all the issues impacting our members. That is why our long term strategy is heavily focused on funding sources that allow us to achieve transformational change.
In response to What is your business model?
Explains how they are funded but NOT their business model. How is this sustainable if 100% donor funded?
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