AI-Ready Nonprofits Will Outscale Everyone Else. The Window to Act Is Now with Sharon Elefant

A nonprofit can have the purest mission in the world and still fail if it’s run like a hobby. We sit down with Dr. Sharon Elefant, CEO of The Nonprofit Plug, to talk about what it really takes to operate a “business with a cause” with the same seriousness you’d bring to a for-profit company.

We dig into the real differences between nonprofit vs for-profit organizations, why tax reporting matters, and how transparency can become an advantage. Sharon explains why nonprofit branding is not a logo project. It’s mission clarity, a specific community you serve, a plan that actually solves the problem, and the ability to answer the question every funder is thinking: “If I gave you $50,000 today, exactly how would you spend it?” We also talk proof of impact, building early wins, and why listening to community needs beats performative charity every time.

Then we get tactical on nonprofit financial management and compliance: financial literacy, budgeting, reading a P&L, and how Form 990 filings influence trust, grant readiness, and even public ratings on platforms like Charity Navigator and GuideStar. We close by reframing “sales” as outreach, pitching, and donor cultivation so your programs can grow without losing integrity.

If you got value from this conversation, subscribe, share it with a nonprofit founder, and leave a review so more mission-driven leaders can find it.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/

See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Transcript

Intro And Nonprofit Plug Overview

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome everybody to the Fowl Brand Podcast. This is Grant McGall, and I'm going to talk about a subject that I don't get a chance to talk about a lot. People don't even know. I'm in Omaha, Nebraska, and my my office mate is in the nonprofit space. And she runs Pink Lotus Project Nebraska. It is a nonprofit. She's been doing it for about eight plus years. And I don't think a lot of people understand it is a business. It's not something you do for fun. It's not a hobby. It's not a nice to have. It's a business. And as a business, you have to have business fundamentals, especially when it comes to brand development. I couldn't, I couldn't think of a better person to have this conversation with than Dr. Sharon Eliphant. She's going to share her expertise. As you see up there, she is the nonprofit, the plug. So we're going to plug her in. We're going to actually learn something from her. So would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Sure, absolutely. Thank you so much. And I'm I'm so stoked that one of your partners is uh is a nonprofit founder too for a great cause. So hello, hello. I'm Dr. Sharon Elephant. I'm the CEO of the Nonprofit Plug. We are a for-profit firm and we also have a nonprofit, the nonprofit plug foundation, which is interesting because it's actually to provide a service among other charitable stuff. But the the nonprofit plug, the for-profit organization, we're basically a boutique consulting firm. We have a staff of about 14. We do nonprofit formations, the state and federal filings, bookkeeping, accounting, financial management, tax support for nonprofits, grant writing for nonprofits, leadership development, donor cultivation training, all sorts of really cool stuff. Literally, your nonstop shop for everything your nonprofit needs. That's what I that was my dream. That's what we did. I just wanted people to have the support in a vetted environment. This is not TikTok information. So you can come here and know you can get good, solid, ethical, legal, all good, good information.

Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Basics

SPEAKER_01 2:08

This is so necessary, so needed, so in demand. I don't know how many people I know that run or involved in nonprofits, and they get to that fork in the road of whether it's a tax issue, it's a uh hiring issue, it's how do I I how do I grow the business? What's the develop business development platform? They really kind of get stuck because they're probably very, very good at the cause that they're trying to to to to overcome, you know, the challenge that's out there. In my case, my business partner, she's out, you know, trying to prevent people from getting breast cancer. That sounds great. And if you do get breast cancer, I'm gonna help you through that that that process, you know, soup and that's a life cycle. But underneath that, you got to run it as a business, right? What does that look like? I want to ask you this very, very first question. What is the difference between a for-profit versus a nonprofit?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

What is that? So the the biggest difference is in the tax reporting. And I'm gonna I'm gonna come back to that. I want everyone to treat them the exact same. I want you to treat your nonprofit with that same for-profit, savage mindset. When you have a for-profit, you care about revenue and expenses, money coming in and money coming out, your payroll, your operational expenses, how you're operating, your taxes filed. Well, you care about that if you're someone who operates a higher level for-profit organization. I want that same savage mindset when you're operating a nonprofit organization. In fact, we don't even have to call it a nonprofit, the whole rest of this conversation. We can just call it a business with a cause. And the primary difference really is in the tax filings and in the reportings and how you treat the organization. So there's no such thing as owner's equity and profit and things like that. What there is, is there's revenue that comes in, whether that's through grants, through program service revenue, through donors, things like that. And you still have expenses. You still have program expenses, you still have the community to serve. And your primary mission to be in alignment with the IRS is charitable. So it's anything you're doing that's going to make our community a better place to be. And the big difference is in the reporting of the taxes. It has different annual tax filing requirements, which is different in every single state throughout the US. The federal is the only one that's the same. And it's all public information. So people can pull your tax filings and you want them to, because that demonstrates transparency. So you can get actually even more funding from grants and from donors and things like that. And those financials are really critical because you're you're you have oversight from different state and federal agencies. And you don't pay taxes. That's everyone's favorite part of all that. You don't pay, you now you pay payroll taxes, depending on the state that you're in, but there's no taxes that you pay on the amount of money that you bring into the organization, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

These are important items to understand. You've given us a definition of a for-profit business and its mission. When it comes to you, what is your what do you how do you you're the ideal client that needs you? As you look through all the people you've helped, and you had if you had it like single it down like this is my ideal client. This the this is the person or people that I think you need me because I can help you. What do they look like?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

My favorite avatar of an individual, the my favorite client to serve is the one that this might sound silly, but it's the one that has no business background, but is aware that they need to have a business background to operate their business with a cause. Because that means they're coachable, they're trainable, that they're willing to learn, they're willing to execute, they're okay with failure because failure is a guarantee it's gonna happen no matter how good you are at what you do. It just is a part of the game, being uncomfortable. My favorite person is that one that started that nonprofit organization, realize they need business development training, and they're ready for somebody to come in and provide that type of support, and they want to invest in that.

Brand Identity And Use Of Funds

SPEAKER_01 6:51

That is so beautiful. Now, you've got the what they call the idea client, and people out there, you know who you are. Like, okay, yeah, Dr. Sharon, you got my full attention. That is me. Now, we had a conversation before we jumped on and started recording about brand and why brand is so important. Some people are like, Oh, I have a nonprofit, I don't need a brand. Like, I want you to dispel that myth of why it's so important to have a brand and what does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, so it's a really interesting concept about people wanting needing to have a brand in the nonprofit sector because you feel like you start a nonprofit, you're entitled to some grant funding, you want to serve the community. So you should just like be given stuff on a silver platter. And it is quite the opposite of what happens. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get that stuff off the ground and build those relationships to get funding. So when I'm talking about branding with our style of clients in the business with the cause sector, branding to me means that you've got your mission, your identified demographic that you're serving, the problem that you're solving, and not the one where you're like, okay, I know that I need to solve food getting to homeless people on the street. That it's got to have a little bit more depth than that. How are you actually systematically going to solve ending unhoused individuals and get them into housing, permanent housing, job placement, case management, mental health providers? I want to help you define all of that. And this is the funniest and craziest thing I always notice with clients is let's say a donor walks in the door and is like, Grant, I have$50,000 for you. How are you gonna spend it? And you're like, Well, I can easily spend$50,000. Okay, yeah, but how are you gonna spend it? Right. What literally, I want to know penny for penny, and they can never answer that. So part of brand identity for a business with a cause is understanding all these different intricate levels of your organization and the problem you're solving and the solution that you have and being able to articulate that. And that's one thing that that we focus on because I know you want that 50k.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, yeah, all of that, and what you said, we call that use of funds. If you have not identified your use of funds, 50,000, great. But what do you how you what are you gonna take and do with that? And it has to be reported, right? You get a$50,000 donation. How does that go operationally? How does it go for your HR? What do you you know, where does it all go into the business? And then the reporting aspects of all that I think are very, very uh important. And I always look at the the outcome because people that next$50,000 let's just say, like, well, show me what you've done um in the past with money that you've gotten, show me the results, show me how many homeless people in that particular case that you have helped. And is it is it verifiable evidence? Because if you can do that, I think you can get more grant money or whatever donations you know for you because you're actually doing the work. But in the beginning, like, well, Grant, I haven't done it yet. I haven't done it yet. And I'm gonna say you need to talk to Dr. Sharon because that's where you need to get to. What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 10:36

So if you're you're brand new to starting your nonprofit or you're within your first couple of years and you maybe really haven't had any impact, first thing I would say to you, go go pick a family to serve, go host a community event, go volunteer at your local shelter or with another organization and put together some impact. There's clearly a reason you wanted to start your nonprofit. So you maybe were already doing this before and then realized that you wanted to help single mothers or um individuals that were pregnant that had no family support system. You you were doing something before. That is all being able to understand that, like, okay, wow, I was really already doing this. Okay, let me put together like some families or individuals I've served and use that as my starting point. And what did you do for them that changed their life or their situation and they're solving some problems? And then we help you articulate that.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

I think that's so important. I I always start people out, especially in my particular case. First of all, you got to be brave in what you're looking to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Because there it's gonna be challenging. You just said it, no matter what it is, you're gonna go through a point where you're going to go through a type of failure. And the only way you get up from that is that you've got to be brave. I call that first, you've got to build your brand, have a brand identity. What is your point of view? What is your personal story? What is that about and why you're doing this? Because people want to understand your why before they understand the product or service that you do, right? And then you gotta do your research. That's the R, right? Your research, your skill set that you bring to the table, what is the skills gap that you potentially may have in trying to reach that goal? How do you identify that? Because if you haven't, the market will. Because if you haven't done your market research and you find out, wow, you know, there's five of the nonprofits doing exactly what I'm talking about. How do you differentiate yourself? It doesn't mean you don't do what you're doing, maybe you do it better, but you need to understand that, right? And then I always say this you gotta be authentic. Are you authentically doing this? You see, you see so many, especially nonprofits that are out there, unfortunately. Like, well, what are they doing with the money? I donate to them, I never see a result, the money just disappears, and these guys are you know seem to be you know doing pretty well for themselves. But have they really you know made an impact? Are you authentic in what you're doing? Do you have you now create the assets which you talked about? That assets show me your proof of work, your digital website, your social media, the clutter you you give out, those are your assets, and they they should uh demonstrate your proof of work, your proof of concept. What it is that you have that's very, very important, and that's what you make visible, right? You want your the visibility of value, is what I found to be a key differentiator in business that people find, meaning you're not aligned in your market that your true target market doesn't see you. Are you visible? Are you truly visible? Because if you really step back and do the assessment, how does your market see you? If they I don't I don't see you at all. So if you're not utilizing search social digital technology, you're not out there, you're not executing on all of those different values, it's going to be a problem. I like where you're at because where I look at you at is that you should be talking to Dr. Sharon in the beginning because you'll find out that you spawn a lot of wheels. I've seen so many people that come to me, grant. I need to build a website. And I ask them, Well, what's your personal story? What's your point of view? Why are you doing it? Like, I haven't done so. You haven't done the real work of building out your mission, your vision, and your values. What is the website gonna say? Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

And I even tell people it could even be as simple as start an Instagram account, post some advice on there, some statistics, and start engaging with the community that you want to serve and really understand what that community needs, not what you think they need. What does that community need? Unless you were a lot of people start a nonprofit because it was a situation like that happened to them, like domestic violence, or maybe your colleague that started the organization for the breast cancer. I don't know if maybe she's a breast cancer survivor. Yeah, yeah. And so, like, you need to understand nothing, I say this all the time, nothing drives me more absolutely nuts and makes my skin crawl when someone goes and takes turkeys to the unhoused community, and I'm like, how are they gonna cook it?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

You know, I thought you didn't think this through.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Yeah, and and that kind of concept though, it happens all the time. So you need to understand who you're who you're serving. You don't, I don't, I don't like it when people come into my community and tell us how we need to be served. Ask me how I need to be served. What do I need? What gaps do I have to make it to that next level, to make sure I have rent for next month, to make sure I can feed my children next month, to make sure I can get to work? Is is it an auto repair? Is it a month of rent relief? What do you need for the community you want to serve? If you're looking to do animal welfare, everyone knows I'm a huge, um, I'm a huge, huge, huge pit bull fan. I'd save all of them in the world if I could. What what does that group need to really like take it to the next level? Advocacy, education, things like that. You gotta understand.

How Sharon Built The Plug

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I I everything you said, I um the audience is leaning in. You feel them? They're they're leaning in. And I want to ask you this question What got you started in the business that you were? Why did you start the plug? What was that that defining moment, your origin story that got you to go on this path?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

So, really interesting. It was it was really back in 2017. So I've always been in the nonprofit sector for the most part. I actually I worked for the VA healthcare system for a few years. So I'm a recovering federal employee. I always like to say. Recovering recovering, yeah. And even when I was with the VA, I worked with outreach programs. So I was in the community, even though I was running clinical operations. And so I ended up leaving the VA and took a job with a nonprofit organization that was serving veterans. It was so much fun. I had a great time. It was about four years, and then I ended up getting laid off. And in that time of being laid off, I was also finishing my doctorate. So I was like, well, this is a good opportunity to finish my doctorate. And I needed to kind of side hustle. So I was connecting with other nonprofits and doing some grant writing, connecting them the resources, um, working with them to just find partnerships, whatever we could. So they were calling me the plug. I was like, this is cool, that's right. I'm the I'm the plug in Los Angeles. I love it. My family was like, what do you mean by that? And I was like, not drugs, although it is Los Angeles, but no, I'm a nonprofit, the nonprofit plug. And then it just kind of like stuck. And I was like, wow, how do I like make this my company and be a better support system for businesses with a cause, with my background also being in business administration and kind of putting it all together and actually using like the degree I went to school for in my sort of everyday life, even though it was more healthcare focused, it was still community-oriented. And it just took me on this path. And I just found other people who love doing what I do, and that's who I hang out with 24-7.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

That's that's a beautiful story. That's what people resonate with, the authenticity of it and how it started to snowball on itself and gravitate and attract uh uh the type of business that you're in. As you got into the business, what did you actually have to learn? Because if you're coming from the VA, coming from what business skills did you have? What finance skills did you have? What operational skills did you have? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

So the biggest, I would say, learning curve that I had was although my background was in business administration, I am not an accountant or a CFO. And the biggest gap I had to fill with clients was teaching them financial literacy and financial empowerment. How to log into QuickBooks, for example, how to read a PL. And if I wasn't confident in doing all of that and understanding revenues and expenses, how could I expect my clients to be? That was the biggest learning curve for me in the first couple of years. Now, funny, funny thing is, it's actually my favorite service that our company offers is financial management, literacy training, um, like financial empowerment, and teaching these nonprofit founders who are operating their business how to read a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and understanding revenues and expenses and budgeting and being comfortable with that and being able to speak to spending money and things like that. That that was the biggest learning curve because that that's such a specialized area. But I know enough now to be dangerous. And so I want to teach business with the cause founders how to be dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I wanted to, I mean, say that and say it loud because just because you're a nonprofit, you're a business. Whether it's a for-profit, no profit, that that's just taxation. A business is a business. Business is a business. Running a running a business, it takes more than just the technical skills that you have. That's great that you know how to serve the community with the um with the service that you have, whether it's the breast cancer prevention or whatever it may be, but at the same time, it's a business. So you have to understand operations, you've got to understand finance, you've got to understand sales marketing, which is my world. Like, okay, show me like and people are like, I hate sales, I hate marketing. So, well, you know what? That's really the core of the business because you're not gonna have much finance if you don't have any business, no sales, right? What are you gonna do? You're not gonna have much business. You don't have you, you know, or if you don't do sales, what what kind of operations do you do you have, right? So, so so you you start to like, well, granted I I need to understand sales and marketing. Like, absolutely. The thing is, you need to understand it from a person that knows how to do it in in the business that you're in. I see the exact value that you bring to the table already. Because if I was a nonprofit or thinking about doing a nonprofit, you know how long it would take me to get to a level of proficiency doing it by myself, as opposed to hiring someone like you to bring me all the way through so I don't have to make all those mistakes that are along the line that I because I have a bad perception of what a nonprofit really is. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Oh, and the amount of perceptions about bad perceptions about nonprofits, and there's valid reasons for those, people really misuse them. They misappropriate them, they misuse them, they they miscommunicate them, they don't use it for the right things. There it's there's so much fraud, there's so much unethical behavior. And that's because people go into nonprofits without any business acumen. And sometimes it's unintentional.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very, very true. So we need to take that, you know, under that's I go back to that R. I mean, doing your research and understanding what you look like in the mind of your ideal customer client. And because you just said it, well, if they've never heard of you, usually the negative kind of surfaces to the top, right? Is this a fraudulent business? Is this just a startup where really they're not gonna do any track? Is this money well spent on my side of the ball? Right? And then how are you gonna then, you know, that's that's just from the customer standpoint. If you're going in and fill out a grant and that type of thing, what kind of information? They're gonna do their due diligence, I assume. If it's a state organization, the federal organization, are you ready? Can you answer these things? Can you dot these I's can you cross these T's? What's your experience in that world?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

So compliance is huge on that side of the house, and and we take that really seriously as far as nonprofits go. You know, for-profit organizations, for for-profit entities kind of do their thing here and there, and they only really just care about revenues and expenses. But in the nonprofit world, we also coach on compliance. Compliance and tax filings has an impact on the type of funding you get because it impacts how you file your federal taxes, which impacts how your funders make decisions, and your tax filings are actually like a visual of your impact. So that's part of our education and that financial literacy empowerment is also teaching these businesses the impact of their tax filings and what that means to their reporting. Not only that, there's entities out there like Charity Navigator and GuideStar that their rating is based on your tax filings. It's not so you have no control of their over their rating except for how you do your tax filings. So that's why I'm saying that department is my new favorite department of our firm for the past couple of years, because it has so much impact. Compliance and finances, and that's that's your brand identity too. It's another way of looking at your brand. People look at your tax filings and and that tells your brand story.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

And the thing with the nonprofit, unlike uh, independent on you know your for-profit, if you're you know, uh, is your tax filing visible? Because on the 990, I think uh most of them have to fill out a 990. Anyone can look that up, anybody could be looking at your your tax filing. It's not like in in a private business where real typically your tax accounting, the IRS, and you see your actual tax filing. Whereas in the nonprofit, everybody can see that.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Right, exactly. And they can, and it's part of your rating with charity navigator, the type of filings that you do.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

So you can't hide those things. So the people are going to see where you're at. If you say you're a business four years, well, guess what? They should see four years of 990s there. If you say you're a one million dollar uh nonprofit, well, your taxes should definitely should say that. So it's very difficult, I think, over time, unless you know how to fudge your number. I'm not gonna get into all of that, but that's a fundamental difference, I believe, in the in the for-profit, nonprofit world, that a lot of your uh financial world is very, very visible. Knowing that up front can you know can help you tell the business story a lot better? I believe one of the big problems is that along with that financial and business acumen, is the narrative. How are you telling the story? How is the story resonating in the in the community that you're looking to serve? And have you really tested that? You know, does it really make sense? Hey, that's what marketing people do all the time. Well, let's let's test that campaign and see if the it if if the story is really what it says it is, and does your ideal client actually see that and want to participate in that? How are you teaching sales and marketing these days?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So that's a good one because we don't really call it like sales and marketing, even though it's kind of like what it is. I'll use my husband as an example. So he has a he has a nonprofit organization and he's a boxing coach. So his nonprofit, Clocked In provides youth programming that is boxing centered, no contact, but he uses boxing as a therapeutic, holistic method to teach kids uh discipline, confidence, uh fitness, health, and wellness, um, and and focus, even though it's through boxing. And and he's his mission is really to educate people on the nonviolent side of what boxing can do for individuals. It's you know, it's great for individuals with Parkinson's, autism, all sorts of like a variety of stuff, not to mention just general physical education. And so um, with him, you know, I wouldn't call it sales, but he really has to outreach to school districts, to other organizations, to supervisor political districts, council districts, and really promote his program and the impact of it. So you could call that, you could call that sales, you know. I do.

unknown 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

So so when we talk about that with businesses with the cause, I don't use the direct word sales, but it's really what they're doing. They're outreaching, and their outreach is their is their form of sales. And so what we're doing is we're teaching them that's where pitch and messaging really comes in. Because also you could call donor cultivation sales.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Sure, sure. It's all it's about promote, self-promoting, business promoting, it's advertisement. It is getting your offer in front of the ideal client that they can take advantage of should it improve it, but you have to develop that narrative no matter what and be different. You have to have a key, I call a differentiation strategy and a communication strategy. And if you don't have those two things, that's a problem because you're not focusing on the things I just said earlier. You're not gonna have much finance if you don't nail this, you're not gonna have much business not business operations uh if you don't nail this, and you won't be filling out a whole lot of taxes if you don't nail this because it's very, very important to have these things. We're gonna finish up here, and before I do, I want you to think about this. Now you've got our audience and they're leaned in, they're clocked in, they're actually taking notes. What is what is your call to action for them? How do they take advantage of what you offer? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

I would say, first of all, go to the nonprofitplug.com. That's our website. You can read all about us there. But even cooler, we have a YouTube channel with a ton of different recordings on there that are trainings. You can watch like an hour recording, teach you how to do donor cultivation, build your board, grant readiness. We so YouTube channels at the Nonprofit Plug. And then we also have the Nonprofit Plug University on the school platform. And I post weekly grants on there. We have um live QA's, other workshops, and things like that. Tons of free resources on top of like all of our paid services. And you can book a call with us right on our website, and those calls are free to learn more about how we can best support you. But go check out the YouTube channel because there's so much free recorded uh training sessions on there that people just start to get familiar with the industry.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Sure. Uh that you got to take advantage of that, people. That's the frameum. So if you're gonna love the frame, you're gonna love the premium that she's bringing to the table. I I assume you are you doing business nationwide or only in a regional area?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Nationwide. Our staff is located all over the U.S. I'm I'm physically in Los Angeles and cover Los Angeles County in Southern California, but our staff is all over East Coast, Midwest, East uh West Coast, everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

I love that show. Take advantage of what Dr. Sharon is bringing to the table to help you as a nonprofit to be successful and complete the mission that you are on and not get upset at the goal line because of some compliance issues and other things that you should have known in the first place. Let's get that knowledge, get that information, and do what you can do. And I encourage your entire audience to see all the episodes of Follow Brand. They can do so at the number five. That's five star BDM. That is five star s t for brand, D for development, infromasters.com. I want to thank you again for being on the show.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Thank you so much for having me. That was a blast.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

I sure was. Thank you.