How to build a nonprofit that pays for itself
A nonprofit CEO on how to make earned revenue work — without losing your mission.
By Patrick Bardsley
Contributor
September 2, 2026 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Fifteen years ago, we built the nonprofit Spectrum Designs around a mission of providing employment and career opportunities for adults on the autism spectrum, a population that continues to face profound barriers to employment. Today, Spectrum is a custom-apparel and merchandise company with over $10 million in annual revenue and more than 100 employees at three locations in two states, plus a licensed location in Florida, serving clients that include Microsoft, J.Crew, and Marriott.
It’s also still a nonprofit. Those two identities — competitive business and mission-driven organization — are not contradictions. Each makes the other stronger.
We are proud to be self-sustaining, covering our expenses and overhead with sales revenue alone. Our social mission might get a customer in the door for a first order, but the quality of our products and service is what keeps them coming back.
There is sometimes a misconception that nonprofits aren’t supposed to generate earned revenue or operate businesses. That isn’t the case, and Spectrum isn’t alone.
Popcorn for the People employs neurodiverse adults in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Prospector Theater, Coffee for Good, and Jonathan’s Landing are all nonprofits that create jobs for adults with disabilities through commercial operations.
For those of us organized as 501(c)(3)s, though, there is a critical distinction from any conventional company: no owners, no shareholders, no dividends. Everything we earn goes back into the organization and the mission it exists to serve.
That changes how you have to operate. Here’s what we’ve learned.
Get creative about growth capital.
Unlike a conventional company, we don’t have the option to sell equity to finance an expansion. If we want to open another facility, buy new equipment, or explore a new line of business, we can’t simply bring in investors and offer them a piece of the company. We must grow differently.
Each of our locations came together in a different way. Our facilities in Westchester, N.Y., and Long Island were made possible by a dedicated group of parents and supporters who helped us raise the capital to establish full-scale operations in those communities. Our facility in Hackensack, N.J., grew out of partnerships with the North Jersey Friendship House and Accses New Jersey, which gave us a foundation to build on as we opened our first branch outside New York.
And our Florida location took yet another form: a licensing partnership with Global Connections to Employment, in Pensacola, created GCE Designs — two nonprofits united in the mission of creating careers for people with disabilities.
That growth took place over 15 years. Scale requires patience, creativity, and people who share your vision for what’s possible.
Sell something people would buy without the mission.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that social good cannot compensate for a product or service people won’t pay for. Ask yourself a simple question: If the mission disappeared from the sales pitch, would someone still buy what you’re selling? If the answer is no, you have a fundamental problem.
Customers may want to support a great cause, but they also have budgets, deadlines, and expectations. A corporate customer ordering thousands of pieces of branded merchandise can’t accept poor printing or a missed event date because our mission happens to be admirable. We have to be able to compete on quality.
If the mission disappeared from the sales pitch, would someone still buy what you’re selling?
That pressure has been healthy for Spectrum because it challenges an assumption we have spent 15 years trying to dismantle: that employing people with disabilities requires accepting lower standards. It doesn’t.
Our employees have helped us build a multimillion-dollar operation precisely because they can meet those standards. Every successful order makes that case better than any argument I could make. And when other employers see neurodiverse people succeeding as production workers, artists, sales representatives, marketers, managers, and leaders, I hope it inspires them to look within their own companies for similar opportunities.
Turn down growth that undermines your mission.
Revenue growth is exciting. But in a social enterprise, growth cannot come at the expense of the people the organization was created to serve. At Spectrum, a larger order isn’t automatically a success if fulfilling it undermines the supportive workplace we’ve built.
We have taken active steps to reduce overtime and weekend shifts. That decision has cost us some larger-volume accounts, but employee retention has climbed more than 10 percentage points, to about 92 percent.
The business exists to advance the mission: We don’t employ people to make T-shirts; we make T-shirts to employ people.
Study your for-profit competitors.
Some of our best lessons haven’t come from other nonprofits. They have come from successful companies in the apparel, promotional-products, and branding industries.
Study the best organizations in your field. See what they do well. Understand where they’re vulnerable. Adopt good ideas and improve on them.
Being a nonprofit shouldn’t isolate you from the marketplace — it should give you one more reason to become excellent within it.
Measure success beyond the balance sheet.
Over the years, Spectrum has grown in revenue, employment, and facilities. But the accomplishment I care about most can’t be quantified on a balance sheet.
Spectrum is no longer a company where people with disabilities make things, but a company made up of people with disabilities. Neurodiverse employees work throughout the organization and have advanced into positions of responsibility and management. They are an essential part of the reason we’ve grown, not simply beneficiaries of that growth.
Fifteen years in, I believe we have proven that doing good and doing good business aren’t competing ideas. Done correctly, they can be the same thing.
