Jeremy Gregg, MBA, CAP, CFRE3-time TEDx speaker. Nonprofit Guru. $40M+ raised.
Bio

3-time TEDx speaker. $40M+ raised for nonprofits. Former Managing Director of Arabella Advisors, a global consulting firm that enabled $4B+ in annual giving while also supporting 40 of the top 50 philanthropies in the world.

Winner of 2 pitch contests. Awarded "Nonprofit Communicator of the Year." Entrepreneur with an Executive MBA. CFRE (Certified Fund Raising Executive), CMT (Certified Mindfulness Teacher), and CAP®️ (Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy). Author of “Daddy’s Time Out,” a children’s book that explains incarceration to the 2.7 million kids with a parent in prison; and Hunger Bugs Me!, a book that uses a “participatory philanthropy” model to explain food insecurity to children who desire to help others.

Founder of Gregg Partners, a revenue strategy consultancy that equips nonprofits and mission-driven businesses to achieve financial stability. Recent clients include the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia), the Pat & Emmitt Smith Charities, and dozens of other nonprofits. Former CDO for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP). Previously co-founded a boutique family law firm as well as Executives in Action, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that engaged transitioning business leaders as pro bono consultants on high-impact projects benefiting charitable causes.

Primary Coaching Topics
- Revenue Strategies for Mission-Driven Businesses
- For-Profit Subsidiaries under 501(c)(3) Nonprofits
- Social Entrepreneurship
- Charitable Fundraising & Philanthropy
- Grantwriting
- Planned Giving, Bequests, and Endowments
- Major Donor Cultivation
- Individual Giving
- Monthly/Recurring Giving
- Nonprofit Web Design & Marketing

I also offer coaching on how to deliver amazing presentations, pitches, and speeches (TEDx, Ignite, etc.) I have experience in startups (for-profit and nonprofit) as well as proven results in cause marketing, digital marketing, and more.

All calls get free follow-up by email.


Recent Answers


This is hard to answer without seeing your current title; I have wondered this about my own titles, but I tried to make them the same search terms that my prospective callers would be entering. This unfortunately makes them boring, but I do not think this is an opportunity for intrigue.

I suppose you could consider a clickbait type strategy (e.g. "My Top 7 Secrets to Doubling Revenues for a Service Business"), but that might seem hokey.

Then again … it might work. Perhaps try it out for 3 months, and then compare that period to the prior one?


I have noticed that the site only works on the Edge browser for me, and not on Chrome. I love this site and have immensely enjoyed the 50 calls that I have hosted over the past few years; I sincerely hope that startups.com continues to invest in the site and expand the marketing efforts behind it.


What an amazing man. I hate that he is experiencing this, but am so grateful you are there for him and his family.

Online platforms are challenging because there are simply so many strangers who need help, and seeing them in 2-dimensional sites makes it easy to miss. What about hosting an event in-person? Find a restaurant that would give you a percentage of sales for the night to go to him, and also take up a collection? Could you maybe throw a party and sell tickets, and donate the proceeds to him?

I know these sound like a lot of work for not much money. But I think that going online and appealing to strangers to help a stranger is going to be very challenging.


The vast majority of donations are provided by individuals, not corporations or foundations. The best approach to building a base has to begin with your personal relationships; if your cause is worth funding, ask everyone you know to support it. If you’re embarrassed to ask your friends and family to support you... it’s going to be impossible to get funding from strangers.

The most effective way to build a nonprofits’ revenues is through recurring (monthly) giving. Set this up from the beginning to train your donors to consider you a part of their monthly budget. This will increase their overall annual support and decrease lapse rate.

Best of luck to you!


You might be better served to pursue traditional financing mechanisms for a for-profit businesses (debt and equity). Assuming you mean tapping grants from US-based foundations, that can be a challenge even for a US-based for-profit business; however, foundations do occasionally offer PRIs (program related investments), which are essentially loans that can be converted to grants if they are not repaid.


I've spent my whole career in nonprofit management, and I cannot tell you how many offers just like yours came my way over the years. You are dealing with an overworked, underpaid, and highly distracted audience... and they are also very skeptical of anything free that promises great outcomes. We've all been burned too many times by pouring time and energy into tools that we saw as solutions ... only to realize that such tools are only effective if we have great relationships in place.

And so many of your target market's decision makers have developed a default "no" to anything like this. And the only way to get past that is to get to know them.

I currently have a fundraising consulting practice, focused on grantwriting for nonprofits. Almost every single one of my clients came as a result of a relationship that I had in place. I've closed almost no cold calls... and the ones I did were organizations that were advertising to hire a grant writer, so I knew they were in a position to hire me.

My best advice is therefore to focus on building genuine relationships with nonprofits thru which you can learn of their struggle. And then, you can pose your tool as a solution.

That ... and potentially contact the orgs that are advertising to hire staff whose duties mirror what you could provide (outreach, fundraising, etc). Position your service as an alternative to making that hire, or at least something they should consider integrating along with the new hire.

Good luck!


Have you considered asking them to create a video testimonial for you that you can then share on your social media sites, thereby giving them more exposure (including for their company and for themselves personally)?

One of my clients also provided very nice thank you presents to referral partners (i.e. gift cards to Nordstrom). That really kept referrals coming!


Just a recommendation for something that might be of interest to you... check out Games for Change. They bring gamification to nonprofits, including partnering with companies like yours to develop apps and games for charities.

Good luck!


Have you contacted existing NGOs/charities to see if you could partner with them? That is exponentially easier than setting up your own entity and raising money for your efforts.

You could potentially create a program of your own underneath an existing organization, and take charge of raising your own funding (but allow them to run it all through their books so they handle all the reporting, tax filing, etc). They would likely need to take a percentage of all gifts secured to cover their admin costs but it would likely still be far less than you would spend setting up on your own.

In terms of donors ... the best place to begin is your natural network (friends, family, and companies where they work). You would then need to track and report all of your outcomes from your work so that you can eventually qualify for a grant funding, which might also be a good path.


Lots of different questions here.

Volunteers are not considered donors in that they can't really deduct their volunteer-related expenses as donations. Nor can the entity claim them as revenue, unless the volunteers donate to the nonprofit and then the nonprofit buys their tickets.

In general, the last thing we need is yet another nonprofit. Why don't you try finding an organization with a similar mission that could partner with you to see if it works?

For example, you essentially become a self-contained department within that charity. You then recruit your own volunteers and donors, run everything through them, and… If you actually need to stand alone in the future… You can separate as an independent organization at that time.

But this way you will not need to setup all your own systems, file your own tax documents, conduct your own audit, etc


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