Nonprofit Resource Development

Inspire

Life is a gift, bearing a gift, which is the art of giving.
-- Dee Hock

The Challenge

The Executive Director and board President of this national, membership-based LGBT advocacy organization faced two related issues. To fulfill its mission faithfully and effectively, their organization required funding for two substantial initiatives, one at the national level and the other at the international level. Yet its membership enrollment was declining.

The Response

An organizational assessment consisting preeminently of interviews of people with a range of prior and current associations with the group revealed an organization that quite simply had outgrown its grassroots-style of operating in terms of resource development. The group needed to institute a consistent and higher-touch approach to member/donor relations from acknowledgment through renewal, as well as an altogether new organizational development approach to seeking new members.

Over the course of the next several months, the organization gradually put into operation a comprehensive set of new development procedures. A Development Coordinator, trained in these new practices, step by step introduced a new member campaign, two special appeals to fund the major initiatives, and protocols around member communications. Even planned giving was introduced.

The Outcome

Not only have the original objectives been obtained, the organization is now better equipped to raise the resources it needs for the programmatic improvements and expansions it desires to put in place. One fact exemplifies the overall situation: The funds raised for the international initiative were more than the agency’s entire budget of just three years prior.