Does a social enterprise or non-profit need to be 100% self-sustaining to attract philanthropic support?

2026-06-21 · Lounge

Sounds good. But just to give you a bit more nuance, it doesn't have to be 100% self sustaining - you just need to have a real busines model that tells potential funders (and even more imporantly, you) that you have something the people actually want.

It's really easy to give things away - but that's not what donors want to support. They want to take something that works and creates real impact - but falls SLIGHTLY short of being self sustaining and giving it the push it needs. They are looking for leverage.

The non-profit I mentioned had a target of a 3% postivie contribution margin each year, and about 10% of that came from donations which was a very tolerable effort (and one the donors were happy to support) because every dollar of donation got them ten dollars of changing the world.

Good luck, and let me know what you come up with, or what problems you might run into

Public Hand Raises only. Questions anonymized; answers are Marc Randolph's mentorship responses with names redacted.