E-commerce is no longer for massive companies, nonprofits now have access to the latest technology that help them create a new revenue stream and increase cause awareness.
The Problem
During my years as a nonprofit technology consultant, I’ve met countless leaders who’ve all shared similar headaches around designing, ordering, or selling custom branded merchandise.
- Nonprofits who ordered boxes of t-shirts for a fundraising event, but are now stuck with unused and outdated inventory.
- Leaders who want to get branded shirts for their team, but struggle to find a way to easily design, order, and distribute the gear.
- Entrepreneurs who want to increase brand awareness and add a new revenue stream with a branded e-commerce store, but quickly realize how challenging this task really is.
Traditionally, all the scenarios above have been an incredibly complex and tedious process. You need to find a merchandise supplier, design the products, manage inventory, fulfill orders, collect payments, pay taxes, and on top of creating an online store for your website. Most people don’t have the time to commit to learning and managing all the intricacies of the e-commerce world. They just want t-shirts for a fundraiser, a way to reward customers, volunteers and employees, or to create a simple store on their website that can bring in some additional revenue.
Our Solution
That’s where we come in. Our goal at Ascend NPO is to make this process easy as possible for you, where you have no inventory, no upfront costs, and no minimum order amounts. We do this by handing all the complexities involved with e-commerce, while taking a small percentage of sales revenue. This means there’s no risk for you; we only make money when you do.
Sound too good to be true? Let me show you how it works.
Our Process
Step 1 | Design
We work with you to take your existing designs and apply them to merchandise products you choose. You’ll have full control over product types, design configurations, and colors. To see what sort of products you can brand, click here.
Need help creating new designs or mech ideas? We can assist with that too.
Step 2 | Setup
We’ll work with you and your webmaster to set up a store on your website. For most websites, this is a quick and easy process that takes less than a day to complete. We can make the online store public-facing so all website visitors can buy or private so only those you want can make purchases.
Here’s an example of a recent site we setup with Dads Move, who does amazing work supporting father’s of children with special needs.
Step 3 | Ordering & Fulfillment
All stores tie into our backend automated ordering, payment processing, and fulfillment system hosted with our partner, Greater Good Gear. Orders are printed on demand through our thoroughly vetted suppliers, which means reduced waste and no inventory for you. We also handle all order fulfillment, which includes shipping, collecting payments, paying taxes, and ongoing customer support; all the headaches.
Keep in mind, if you wish to manage your e-commerce store and not use our hosted platform, we can also work with you to get everything off the ground and ready for you to take over.
Step 4 | Collect Revenue
This is the easy part. At the end of every month, we will email you a report of your monthly orders, the portions we collect, and a check for your portion of sales. That’s it.
You sign up for our zero up-front cost service and start receiving a new source of revenue within a couple of weeks.
Our goal is to make setting up an online store easier and more accessible for all organizations. If you’re interested in learning more, schedule a free consultation with us below.
