NPOs generate a huge amount of intellectual property – research, learning, training material, ways of working and more. How do you turn your intellectual property into an asset that brings in much-needed income to support your projects and programmes?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Can you offer the same service that you give your beneficiaries to paying clients? For example, perhaps you offer free healthcare screenings. Why not approach a local business and offer to provide paid healthcare screenings for their staff? In this way, the business benefits by having healthier staff, and your NPO has a new income stream.
2. Package your intellectual property (training, research, ways of working) into products/offerings for a new market, delivered by your team. This is a great way to share what you have learnt and increase your reach while creating income.  Just a caution: if it takes off, be careful that your team isn’t spending more time on the new products and services than they are on beneficiary programmes.
3. License what you do to other organisations (good for geographic growth), individuals, or companies for a licensing fee. This will bring in passive income from intellectual property once the ‘franchise’ model is set up with legal paperwork and manuals

To make these suggestions work, you will need a dedicated champion who will look for clients and do the sales, so that your income-generating projects launch properly and are well maintained.