Catalyze August 2022

S T A R T I N G A N N G O W I T H T E R R I
W I N S T O N O F W A M
Barb Quaintance:
If somebody came to you and said "I want to start my own
nonprofit, not necessarily about music or technology or
anything, but I want to start a nonprofit on something I
care about," what are three things you'd say you'd have to
know this to get started.
From: Terri Winston, Founder
and Executive Director,
Women's Audio Mission
Terri Winston:
I think the three things would be one: you should be an
expert in the thing that you're going to start the nonprofit
about. It's because you need someplace where you don't
need to learn things. Luckily I was an educator for a decade
and I was an audio engineer and a musician for 20 years
prior to that. So I didn't have to worry about that expertise
or convincing people that I had the expertise. I already had
that experience. So that would be one, make sure you're an
expert, at least functionally in the thing you're going to
work on. And I think two: what was a really helpful skill for
me to have was already having written grants and
proposals for my job as a professor, and then things like
knowing what a theory of change is, and being able, to
figure out what the theory of change is for your
organization. That's so simple. There are so many resources
on how to create a theory of change. The first thing it
would do is it would really help your language on what
exactly you are trying to change and then really crystallize
how you're going to do that. So I think that theory of
change piece, and then tie it to kind of like a business plana
strategic plan. Just learn what that looks like. Like what a
SWOT analysis is.
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