Starting a Nonprofit company

[thecleaner]

Does anyone have experience in this area?

I want to start some type of educational program for troubled teens who want to be entrepreneurs.

I also want to start an educational awareness program for parents.

Could I do both of these as one non-profit company or should I do two different ones?

Anyone know the ends and outs of a venture like this and what is involved?

[piatkow]

I think that is going to be very specific to the jurisdiction that you are in.

[Marketing Guy]

If you are UK based then it would fall under the label "social enterprise", which is basically a non profit business (kind of between a business and a charity) - you still own and control it, but it runs as a non profit.

In Scotland, the Scottish Executive offers a lot of help and funding with this (but as with any Gov. deal there's loads of red tape). Also, I believe the Business Gateway can help you out with that as well. I would think you would have to register as an "official" social enterprise to receive help, funding and possibly tax benefits from it though. Your local council should be able to start you off in the right direction. Also check out Young Enterprise - that's a UK based organisation that takes local business people to last year school students regularly and they run a company together (and the companies compete nationally with other schools).

I would approach both as the same company - if you are targeting young adults then it would be sensible to keep parents in the loop as well and that's easier done as one organisation. Also reduces marketing costs and promoting 1 brand with 2 core services is easier than promoting 2 brands.

My experience is limited to Scotland, but from what I see the social enterprise community is similar to that of charities - fairly tight knit, lots of cross organisation collaborations and so on. So based on that, a good starting point would be to get in touch with either local youth charities / social enterprises and perhaps attend networking events or conferences.

In terms of funding it would probably be good if you could get a working site up and running first and then look for cash to expand it to the offline world - you would have your traffic levels / feedback to use to pitch for funding and justify holding seminars, tutorials or whatever you have planned.

Sounds like a really good idea you have there - wish there was something like that when I was at school! Young Enterprise was useful, but it was basically the popular kids running the ship and everyone else doing donkey work! Funny story - I was one of the ones doing donkey work, so at the final exam I answered every question criticising the MD (also Head Boy of the school) - he hated me and when he had to present me with an award for getting one of the top marks in the country, well you can imagine he wasn't happy! ;)

So, one on one and case specific training and tutorials would be really good for kids I'd say. Perhaps also think about hooking up with housing, drug related, employment and other charities that deal with young people with various issues - I'm sure they would be glad to see more options for young people who don't quite fit the "norm" (as entrepeneurs tend to be!).

Best of luck with the venture! Feel free to give me a shout if you'd like to bounce ideas back and forth.

Scott