Diversifying Nonprofit Revenue Beyond Federal Grants

By Kelsey Lyon

A few years ago, we at the National Environmental Health Association found ourselves in what most nonprofits would call a dream scenario. We had just been awarded two of the largest federal grants in environmental health. These grants accelerated our work toward our mission to build, sustain, and empower an effective environmental health workforce. This was not incremental funding. It was transformational funding ؅— the kind that unlocks an organization.

Overnight, the question changed from “Can we afford to do this?” to “What else could we do?” We moved quickly to expand programs, grow teams, piloted new ideas, and reach the environmental health workforce in ways we had never imagined. We felt unstoppable.

But in 2023, federal funding conversations shifted. The tone changed. The certainty we had been operating under started to erode, and we were forced to confront something we hadn’t fully acknowledged. We weren’t just supported by federal funding. We had become dependent on it. And the people we had always called “constituents” — we needed to start thinking of them as “customers.”

In a room full of passionate advocates, technical experts, and people deeply committed to our mission, we asked a question we could barely stomach: What happens if this goes away — not hypothetically, but operationally, in our current structure, with our current budgets?

The answer was clear.

We knew we had to fundamentally change how we operated or risk becoming irrelevant. We made a deliberate shift and put revenue growth at the center of our organization. It stopped being just a priority and became the lens for every decision across every team, initiative, and investment. If something didn’t strengthen our long-term financial health, we challenged whether it should move forward.

Treating Programs Like Products

We examined our non-grant revenue streams — our credentials, certifications, training programs, and study materials. They were core to our identity, but they did not operate like a business, and we needed to change that. The conversation shifted from “What do our constituents want?” to questions such as “What problem are they trying to solve?” and “What will they pay for?”

We hired a director of revenue and growth who brought objectivity and a sales mindset to centralize decision-making around customer insights and financial outcomes without emotional attachment. After analyzing our data, we took targeted action. When it made sense, we paused projects with no clear return and sunset offerings that had history but not impact.

For example, we sunset three underperforming courses and adjusted pricing across membership and credentialing to better align with customer value. To minimize barriers to entry while maintaining the long-term viability of the credentialing program, we concentrated on a modest fee adjustment at the examination stage, where our data showed the smallest impact on candidate progression. We also found that credential holders highly value maintaining their certification, which allowed us to increase renewal pricing to better reflect its importance, not just the cost to administer it.

Building a Revenue and Growth Engine

We had to look at our organization through a lens of efficiency and return. We rebuilt our structure and made difficult staffing decisions when structure didn’t match our financial reality. At the same time, we invested in our revenue and growth department, hiring a tenured salesperson to explore new markets and mature our sales structure, with an emphasis on business-to-business multiyear agreements.

As we stabilized internally, we also reframed how we think about our work externally.

Our CEO’s time shifted outward, toward private sector partners, sponsors, and donors. From them, we heard the voice of the market — where we were hitting the mark and where our offerings didn’t match real-world needs. This feedback was honest and actionable.

Our grant-funded programs remained a high priority and became entry points. Every webinar, training, and free resource became part of a broader ecosystem that intentionally connects participants to other National Environmental Health Association offerings, building a pipeline for sustained engagement.

We also re-examined the value of membership itself. Over time, membership had effectively become a discount mechanism, where the savings on our conference or credentials often exceeded the cost of joining. As a result, many individuals were joining primarily to access lower-priced products rather than for the inherent value of membership. In response, we reduced this imbalance by narrowing the discount gap and actively repositioning membership as a resource that enables professionals to perform their environmental health roles more effectively. This work includes implementing a tiered pricing model to better reflect the value of membership over time.

We revamped our website and invested in a public relations strategy. Our website now helps customers make decisions through clear navigation, product-forward structure, direct messaging, and strong calls to action. Our public relations firm works diligently to ensure we appear in consumer media and secure our place as the go-to organization for environmental health expertise, getting our name in front of individuals and companies we would never reach through our traditional channels.

Embedding Revenue Discipline Across Decisions

Most importantly, we changed how decisions get made.

Today, every initiative, budget request, new hire, or product idea must answer a simple question: How does this contribute to revenue growth? We implemented pricing and costing frameworks. We stopped guessing and started asking customers directly what they value. We use structured templates to ensure we understand the full cost and potential return of every decision, and this has made us more disciplined.

None of this has changed our mission to build, sustain, and empower an effective environmental health workforce. However, by changing how we approach our work, we have become more responsive to our members. We are starting to deliver what they truly value, because we have prioritized decision-making systems that require us to listen.

We are lucky. Thanks to our federal partners, we remain well-funded through federal grant dollars, and we are incredibly grateful. But we are continuing to bring discipline to our decision-making and build our non-grant revenue streams. Every mission-driven organization faces the same truth: Passion gets you started, but sustainability is what allows you to keep going.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.