This is the sixth-and-half post in a series applying Seth Godin’s rules of bootstrapping (see also here) to building a non-profit organisation.
Scale and the Free Prize Inside
We left Rule 6 a little watered down: “Scale carefully and find the size that works for your organisation”.
There’s a type of scaling, though, that is a reward: when scaling in a particular way means that you make a free prize for someone (see also here).
There might be a scale at which you are able to give something to your customers (or to people who are not yet your customers – maybe even people who never will be your customers) at no real cost to you. Is there something you own that you can sell cheaply and easily – or give away – that adds tremendous value to them? Could you:
- Share a resource or planning tool?
- Grow big enough that you can offer a useful physical space to the community?
- Thicken the network by connecting different groups of your users so that they can create value for each other – or for someone else entirely? How big does your network need to be to be useful?
If you’re working more in service of a vision (that is, in service of people) than profit, there is more than likely an asset of some kind that you already own that you can share with others.
You might also create a free-prize for your organisation by selling the asset in some way. This isn’t free, but if it allows you to serve more people in a way that creates value for everyone and pays for itself then it’s prizes all round.
Or you might charge a litlte more, covering some of your overheads at no cost to yourself (prize for you) and allow you to serve more effectively and sustainably elsewhere (prize for the community).
The Business Model Canvas is a great tool for identifying assets that you could turn into prizes…