Areas of Expertise
Your initial consultation is always free, whether in person or on the phone. For consulting to work both for the organization and the consultant, there has to be a good fit and a real commitment to work together. Sometimes boards or executive directors get a big idea and it takes someone from outside the organization to realistically assess its viability. The consultant needs the tools and the latitude to undertake the assessment and the organization needs to be willing to assimilate the findings of the assessment. When the right ingredients are in place, the recipe developed will be successful for the nonprofit and advance their mission through enhanced sustainability.
Once we have decided to work together, we will settle on the scope of work to be undertaken together, the time frame, and the price.
Some typical areas of expertise we might explore for consulting include these:
Capital Campaigns
A decision to undertake a capital campaign requires resources beyond the staff and the board. A skilled consultant can help focus the campaign efforts, identify campaign leadership and resources. Most consultants will want the organization to identify a core group of individuals to provide candid insights into the organization’s leadership, prospects, programs, potential, and aspirations.
When an organization is truly ready and takes the time to properly develop and implement a capital, endowment, or comprehensive campaign, it can move the organization to a higher level of mission achievement. However, undertaking a campaign effort when underprepared can be devastating to an organization and negatively reverberate for a long time. Working with a skilled consultant, can save time, money and reputation for a nonprofit.
Building Endowment
Some organizations rock along for decades doing events and writing grants for funding and never developing much beyond that. Some will develop an annual fund or a membership program.
Then something happens. Maybe it’s a bequest received. Or it might be a board member who has seen an endowment stabilize another nonprofit. Sometimes it’s a development staffer who promotes the concept of building an endowment for the future.
Regardless, when an organization takes steps to assure its future through building an endowment, it changes the organization. Instead of focusing on the next grant or the next event, the organization begins to think strategically about its best and most logical funding prospects.
Building endowment has to start at the top. The board and staff leadership have to be proactively on board. Call Judi to learn more about your organizations to build endowment.
Comprehensive Campaign
For any number of reasons, an organization might decide to roll multiple funding efforts—capital, endowment, annual—into one campaign and seek blended gifts, outright gifts, and planned gifts all at the same time. The timing and execution of a well-planned comprehensive campaign can help an organization advance quickly.
Such an undertaking would begin with a study assessing similar facets of the organization, just like a capital campaign.
Development Assessments
Sometimes an organization finds that its fundraising efforts have stagnated. A development assessment will review board and executive staff participation; development staff capabilities and training; literature, social media, and website support; metrics for historical funding efforts; database capabilities; and recommendations for next steps.
