The Revenue List is the Easy Part
Updated: 6 days ago
160+ opportunities for association and nonprofit leaders looking to diversify revenue and unlock new growth
Just here for the list? Jump to the Revenue Opportunity Landscape below.
If you want the thinking behind it, keep reading.
Ask almost any association or nonprofit leader about growth as a priority within their strategic plan, and watch as the topic of revenue diversification quickly comes up. Membership value is changing, traditional sponsorships are becoming harder to sell the same way, costs are rising, and boards are asking tougher questions about long-term sustainability. It's no surprise that generating non-dues revenue ranked as the No. 1 challenge for associations for four consecutive years, as cited by more than half (51.9%) of the respondents in Naylor's association benchmarking research.
That naturally leads to leaders asking: What else could we be doing?
Followed closely by, "If I only had a list to choose from."
When I hear that, my mind immediately goes to the scene in The Matrix with the infinite white backdrop. I feel like Neo and Trinity standing still as row after row of racks speed behind us -- mental racks filled with previous revenue projects, business models, financial statements, strategic revenue mixes, internal challenges, lessons learned, and of course, a long list of potential opportunities to choose from.
There's no shortage of possible opportunities: courses, certifications, sponsorships, research, data, consulting, job boards, licensing, marketplaces, affinity programs, events, grants, and corporate training, just to name a few.
And the instinct to want a long list of possible ways to generate revenue makes complete sense. But after spending a lot of time in these conversations, I know that a list's role is to be a catalyst for a much bigger discussion. I typically ask a slightly different question back:
If I gave you a list of 160 revenue opportunities today, how confident would you be choosing three that your organization could start next week?
Most people are much less confident (and less excited) about that part. And the plot thickens.
The revenue list is not the strategy
Yes, a long list of potential revenue streams can show you what’s possible and what else has been done. They are useful in brainstorming sessions and executive workshops. But they can't tell you what makes sense for your organization. And as many leaders know, narrowing down a list is certainly not a revenue strategy.
Take data as an example. An organization might have years of proprietary industry information, which could open the door to paid benchmarking reports, subscriptions, dashboards, custom research, licensing, indexes, or APIs. But knowing those revenue streams exist does not tell you whether the data is actually distinctive, who would pay for it, what decisions it would help a customer make, whether you have the rights to use it commercially, whether the economics justify the investment required to build and maintain it, and most importantly, if or how those products align to the organization's purpose and mission.
The same is true of sponsorship, education, consulting, certification, marketplaces, and almost every other opportunity on the list. As CSAE noted in the context of sponsorships, understanding what the other side actually values is critical. An attractive or exciting revenue idea can still be a bad opportunity.
ASAE makes a similar point in its recent article on mission-aligned non-dues revenue: successful programs do not come from simply launching more products and services. They require alignment with mission, genuine audience needs, operational capacity, and disciplined choices about what is worth pursuing.
That has been consistent with what I’ve seen in practice. The strongest growth opportunities tend to appear when the question shifts from, “What could we sell?” and starts asking, “What do we have that is genuinely valuable, to whom, and what could we build around it?”
Back to the list.
I built the revenue opportunity list I wanted to use
For a list that gets brought up as often as this one does, I was surprised by how hard it was to find a comprehensive, structured, and centralized view of the revenue pathways available to associations and nonprofits. So, I started building one.
I drew from pieces already in the market, including well-established themes from ASAE, CSAE, Imagine Canada, and CANRev Collaborative, then layered in examples I’ve used directly with organizations and boards, conversations with association and nonprofit leaders, patterns from adjacent sectors, and then AI to fill in a few gaps.
And now you can have the list, too.
Canvas + Key's Revenue Opportunity Landscape brings together just over 160 revenue opportunities across 11 areas, from learning, credentials and events through to data, professional services, marketplaces, intellectual property, physical assets, financial assets, and contributed funding.
The landscape isn't infinitely exhaustive like those racks in The Matrix (yet!). But it does bring a practical version together into a one-page view that association and nonproft leaders can download, share, print off, and mark up today.
How to use it
The landscape is meant to help leadership teams see the field before narrowing it. How you use it will depend on where your organization is starting.
A few suggestions to get started:
Scan for what already exists. Mark the revenue streams your organization already uses today. This gives you a quick view of where revenue is concentrated and where there may be room to expand, evolve, or rebalance.
Look for adjacent opportunities. Pay attention to areas that connect naturally to what your organization already does well or has built over time.
Circle what deserves a closer look. The goal is not to identify everything you could do. It's to surface the opportunities that may be worth a deeper conversation.
Use it to challenge assumptions. A familiar idea is not always the best idea, and an unfamiliar one is not automatically a bad fit. The landscape can help open the conversation and surface assumptions that are often harder to see from inside the business.
Growth rarely comes from having the longest list of ideas. It comes from knowing where you have a real opportunity, what evidence you need before investing, and what it will take to turn that opportunity into something that works.
What happens after the scan will look different for every organization. For some, it may uncover a few obvious areas to explore. For others, it may raise questions about where real demand exists, or what would need to change internally before a new opportunity can be pursued.
[Note: The landscape uses “revenue opportunities” across three areas: Operating / Earned Revenue, Financial Revenue, and Contributed Funding. They all matter to an organization’s financial picture, but they tend to play different roles in a growth conversation. For most teams using the landscape to think about revenue diversification, Operating / Earned Revenue is where the main growth opportunity sits. Financial Revenue and Contributed Funding remain important parts of the picture, but play a different role strategically. Not every dollar of revenue is created, pursued, or managed in the same way.]
Putting it to work
Now comes the interesting (and fun!) part.
Take the landscape into your next leadership conversation and see where the discussion goes. Notice which opportunities have real energy behind them.
Then bring me your marked-up copy.
At Canvas + Key, I work with leaders to make sense of what comes next: where there may be a real growth opportunity, what deserves a closer look, what needs to be tested, and what it would actually take to build.
If your copy comes back with a few circles, a few question marks, and a conversation you want to keep going, reach out and let's talk about how we might help.
Built to be shared and to evolve
This is the first edition of the Revenue Opportunity Landscape, and I expect it to change. Markets change, new business models emerge, and organizations continue to find new ways to create and capture value. If you see something missing, send it my way. I’ll continue refining the landscape and plan to publish an updated edition each October.
Revenue Opportunity Landscape © 2026 Canvas + Key. Licensed under CC BY 4.0
Built to be shared. Free to use with attribution to Canvas + Key Co.
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