Earned Revenue for Nonprofits:

Your key to sustainable funding could be an untapped resource that’s tied to your mission.

Nonprofit leaders know that navigating today’s unpredictable funding landscape requires planning, adaptability, and a willingness to look beyond traditional funding sources. Healthy organizations are continuing their mission-driven work because they’ve diversified their funding; however, even a nonprofit with a balanced portfolio can find it challenging to build a sustainable financial future.

One strategy that works, but is often unexplored by nonprofit organizations, is earned revenue.

Read on to learn more, including examples from nonprofits that are leveraging their strengths and resources to earn revenue for their organizations.

What if your most sustainable source of funding was rooted in what you already do well, and tightly linked to your mission?

The answer to a stronger financial future for your nonprofit organization could be to employ an earned revenue strategy. Before we get to the examples, let’s first define earned revenue.

WHAT IS EARNED REVENUE?

Earned revenue is income that has been generated from entrepreneurial ventures or activities where value is exchanged for payment. We previously shared insights around earned revenue for nonprofits, presenting six proven strategies.

Two of the six that we highlighted were:

Social Enterprise
Licensed Intellectual Property (IP) or Technology

In this post, we’ll review these two strategies and share real-world examples to demonstrate how, by leveraging what you already do well, your organization could build a stronger financial future.

IS YOUR ORGANIZATION READY TO PURSUE EARNED REVENUE?

Before you pursue any earned revenue strategy, it’s crucial to take stock of the financial health of your organization. Truth be told, if your organization is struggling to stay afloat, not even a proven strategy like earned revenue may save it. As sobering a thought as this may be, it’s important to note. However, if your organization’s mission has already been well validated with traditional funding sources like donations and grants, you could be ready to pursue earned revenue opportunities.

You’ll also want to consider the possible assumptions and biases from which your organization may be operating. Historically, the assumption has been that nonprofit teams should “do more with less”. Although many nonprofits have learned to survive by keeping overhead and salaries low, over time, this scarcity mindset can result in poor infrastructure, outdated technology, high staff turnover, employee burnout, and fewer services for clients.

REMEMBER: A NONPROFIT IS A BUSINESS

The reality is, like any business, a nonprofit organization requires sustainable funding to survive and thrive. For nonprofits, thriving means not only continuing mission-driven work and meeting outcomes, but also compensating employees fairly, innovating programs and services, and expanding impact. With today’s ever-rising cost of living, success for nonprofits is a greater challenge than ever before.

TAKE STOCK OF YOUR STRENGTHS AND RESOURCES

At Open Eye, when we partner with nonprofit clients, we work with them to look at what they already have and do well. Then, we explore how to optimize these strengths and resources, ensuring that funding solutions remain mission-aligned to comply with their tax-exempt status.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

Operating a social enterprise is one way organizations can leverage their strengths to build a strong financial future. The following examples demonstrate different ways nonprofit organizations can earn revenue by operating a social enterprise.

OPEN EYE CLIENT: ACTIVE HEROES

With Open Eye’s help, Active Heroes leveraged an existing resource to earn revenue in support of its mission. Located in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, Active Heroes is a nonprofit organization that provides activities, events, and programs for the military community. Their mission is to “serve the military community—including active-duty service members, reserves, veterans, and their families—with healing and hope”(activeheroes.org).

In our work with the Active Heroes team, we started by asking them to identify any possible resources the organization already had that could be possible revenue generators. This was quickly answered, as there were two cabins on their property that were being rented to veterans for free, as well as a large event pavilion and welcome center.

Renting the cabins for free, although mission-aligned and generous, was a costly activity without a designated sponsor or donor. However, when viewed through a new lens informed by Open Eye’s expertise, the cabins, event pavilion, and welcome center emerged as earned revenue opportunities.

What resulted was a social enterprise named “Operation R&R” (Rest and Relaxation). This venture would allow Active Heroes to continue offering its cabins free of charge to disabled and combat veterans, while also opening up an earned revenue stream by enabling public rentals. Thus, the cabins would go from being a cost center to a profit center.

Open Eye experts built a custom digital system linked to online rental platforms (Houfy, Airbnb), which led to cabin rentals multiple times per week. Active Heroes continues to generate sustainable revenue from Operation R & R today. You can read more about this social enterprise here.

PUBLIC EXAMPLE: HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES

Founded in 1988 by Father Gregory Boyle of Dolores Mission Church, Homeboy Industries began with a vision to improve the lives of former gang members in East Los Angeles. Today, this nonprofit organization provides hope, training, and support to thousands of formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people annually.

Embedded directly into Homeboy Industries’ mission is a multi-stream social enterprise strategy that began with a single bakery. Now, participants can find hope, healing, training, and employment in over 15 possible social enterprises, including the bakery, silkscreening and embroidery services, electronics recycling, catering, dog grooming services, and more.

Homeboy Industries leveraged deep community connections and the skills and talents within its team to create revenue-generating businesses that not only provide work experience for the organization’s clientele, but also continue to fund its mission.

LICENSED IP & TECH

Licensing intellectual property (IP) or technology is another earned revenue strategy that can strengthen a nonprofit’s financial future. The following examples showcase nonprofit organizations that have leveraged their knowledge and expertise to pursue earned revenue by selling licensed IP or tech to others who share in their mission.

PUBLIC EXAMPLE: CAMH GLOBAL LEARNING ACADEMY

Located in Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, providing clinical care to more than 38,000 patients annually.

As a leading research centre in its field, CAMH “conducts groundbreaking research, provides expert training to health care professionals and scientists, develops innovative health promotion and prevention strategies, and advocates on public policy issues at all levels of government”(camh.ca).

Launched in October 2025, the CAMH Global Learning Academy made CAMH’s evidence-based mental health education and training globally accessible through online courses and modules that are available to healthcare professionals, community organizations, and the public. With some programming offered free of charge, most of the education and training in the CAMH Global Learning Academy is available for purchase.

By leveraging deep knowledge, experience, and expertise in the mental healthcare sector, CAMH created an earned revenue opportunity for its organization by making its licensed IP available for purchase.

This earned revenue strategy is tightly linked to CAMH’s mission “to improve the well-being and health for patients, families, and communities by transforming mental health care through world-leading science, innovative prevention, and evidence-driven systems change”(camh.ca).

OPEN EYE CLIENT: SOUTHWEST CENTER

Southwest Center (SWC) is a nonprofit organization located in Louisville, Kentucky, that has been fulfilling its mission to support and enrich the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities for over 40 years.

The SWC team found it challenging to find appropriate, accessible housing to allow their clients to live independently; faced with this ongoing barrier, they sought Open Eye’s help to work together toward a solution.

What emerged from discussions in this ongoing project was not only a solution that would change the lives of SWC’s clients, but also an earned revenue opportunity; a housing project that would operate outside of the nonprofit as a separate business. Leveraging their team’s extensive knowledge and understanding of clients’ needs, along with existing tools and community connections, SWC worked with Open Eye to devise a plan to break ground on Southwest Center Housing at the end of 2026.

As this project continues to take shape, Open Eye has begun developing a digital app that will embed inclusive design standards into housing plan reviews and grant application tools. This app is an example of licensed tech that SWC will be able to sell to other nonprofits and organizations who face similar barriers. This licensed tech will not only help SWC solve a core problem its clients face, but also earn revenue to strengthen its financial future.

BEYOND LICENSING: CONSIDER MANAGED SERVICES

To increase both earned revenue and mission impact, a nonprofit organization could go beyond the idea of licensing and instead retain ownership of its IP or tech, manage it in-house, and sell it as a service.

Let’s use Southwest Center as an example. By managing the housing app as a service instead of selling it as a standalone tech solution, SWC could earn revenue from a more robust offering, save peer organizations and builders time learning the app, and increase its organization’s impact.

This enhanced offering would bolster the technology with insight gained from using the app for SWC’s own housing projects, as well as knowledge and expertise from its 40+ years serving individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The result could be a recurring revenue stream from organizations and builders who have housing projects of their own that require accessible design and functionality.

Over time, from managing and selling this service, SWC could establish itself as a proven leader in the accessible housing space, while also earning sustainable revenue. As a result, SWC’s impact could not only continue, but expand further, impacting people and organizations beyond its own community.

OPEN EYE CAN HELP

As a team of experts with a breadth of experience working with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, Open Eye has the unique ability to help our clients see their problems differently, allowing them to broaden their view and uncover earned revenue opportunities outside of traditional funding models.

If you’re ready to pursue earned revenue opportunities for your nonprofit organization, Open Eye can help. Connect with our experts: h@openeye.email

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