Fundraising

Let’s face it, most organizations need revenue and resources to power their purpose.

Your investment in Fundraising and Revenue Growth isn’t about the money, it’s about what those resources allow you to do – educate children, feed lonely seniors, curate art exhibits, coalesce disaster relief, provide medical care, grow your business, and more.

As fundraising and revenue growth consultants, Jennifer Tersigni and the team at Raise the Bar Consulting help hundreds of organizations like yours raise the money necessary to broaden your impact. We partner with your team to build your fundraising program, raise more money, grow relationships with donors and funders, and increase the revenue you generate annually.

Your annual giving campaign – comprised mostly of the unrestricted donations that fund your operations – is the lifeblood of your mission. Without these gifts, it is extremely difficult to make an impact. Growing the depth and breadth of your Annual Giving Program is one of the most important steps an organization can take on the road to sustainability. It’s not difficult – most organizations simply need to increase the volume and depth of their fundraising work all year long. Working to expand the overall number of donors who give to your organization, at any level, and growing giving from current donors, are essential steps to raise more money over time, improve donor retention, and ready your organization for larger fundraising efforts, like a Capital Campaign or Planned Giving Program.

Our team is here to help you advance every aspect of your Annual Giving Program. We help your organization design strategies to deepen donor relationships and increase the volume of your fundraising activities. Our strategies integrate and leverage various platforms that are proven-effective in growing fundraising success, including mail, e-mail, text, voice broadcasting, virtual fundraising, social media advertising, peer-to-peer fundraising, and more. And we can help you implement your campaigns, too, if needed.

Fundraising is easier and more successful when you know your donors and when they are firmly committed to supporting you. But it can be tough to know where to start and, too often, organizations waste precious time and staff resources on time-intensive, low-return strategies, or by simply running around town “being visible” with no plan at all.
That’s where we can help. We partner with your team to design turnkey strategies that leverage technology and integrate relevant, high-touch, low-cost activities that build better relationships with donors. You’ll come away with four to six donor engagement strategies that you can integrate into your everyday work, so that your donors will feel connected to you in ways that matter most.

There comes a time when building your future literally means building or acquiring new space and raising the funds to make it happen. The process each group uses to arrive at this decision is different, but the end end-result is usually the same: embarking on a capital campaign.

With a combined century of experience running more than four dozen capital campaigns, the Raise the Bar team is here to help. From the initial campaign plan to the gift that gets you to your goal, we’re here to support, strategize, fundraise, and celebrate. We can restart stalled campaigns, too.

Our Capital Campaign Consulting typically begins with a Feasibility or Readiness Study that helps to set realistic goals and prepare your group for success. We understand that there are times when a group plans to move forward with a campaign without a full study, and our services can accommodate this approach.

From feasibility and readiness, we move to the campaign implementation stage where we serve as your capital campaign advisors and project managers. During this phase, we partner to build and train your campaign committee, confirm your goal, create the campaign design with phases, gift levels, and recognition strategies, ready campaign collaterals, conduct donor and prospect research, develop a campaign pyramid and identify prospects for each gift level, create a solicitation strategy, mentor and train your team on solicitation strategies, and work the campaign.

We offer hands-on guidance and support that takes many forms: resourcing the Campaign Committee and training your team in cultivation and solicitation; mentoring your Board in their ambassadorial campaign role; identifying your best prospects; determining the best ways to capture donors’ interests; and joining your team for a limited number of solicitations monthly.

If your team needs more support to solicit donors, or boots-on-the-ground fundraising to implement your campaign, Raise the Bar is also available to serve as your contracted fundraisers through a fractional staffing engagement.

Major Gifts, Special Projects, Planned Giving, and Endowment Initiatives

Over time, your fundraising program can offer donors unique opportunities to make contributions to support your cause. Sometimes it feels like the next step is to add a major gift program due to the growth of your Annual Giving Program, yet other times it feels right to start with creating a Planned Giving Program because of the length of time and depth of your volunteer program or client services.

Wherever you are in this journey, Raise the Bar is here for you. Our team of fundraising experts works with you to design exceptional gift programs that are rightsized to fit the size of your donor pool and integrate within your overall fundraising program. We understand the nuanced financial management strategies that lead donors to make unique gifts, and help your team develop leads generation, engagement, solicitation, and recognition strategies that are specific to these types of fundraising initiatives. We also train your staff and Board team in working with exceptional donors and help you to implement your program if you need it.

Growing your corporate and foundation fundraising strategy doesn’t have to feel all-consuming. Our team at Raise the Bar remembers first and foremost that “grantors” are donors, too. Whenever possible, we infuse donor engagement and fundraising strategies into the corporate and foundation grant writing process to improve your chances of success. We help you develop a strategy that is appropriate for your organization by identifying natural corporate and foundation partners; creating an effective corporate and foundation relationship management strategy; and helping you to do the work! For companies and foundations that require grant and sponsorship submissions, we work in collaboration with your team every step along the way from prospecting to concept design, to writing, and submission, and service each phase of the grant writing process.

We offer corporate and foundation consulting through strategic consulting packages, or full grant writing support through 12, 18, or 24-month contractual engagements. Clients who retain Raise the Bar for a contractual engagement receive comprehensive prospecting and a full 12-month calendar of leads.

Government funding can be a wonderful way to grow your capacity and strengthen your services. Many nonprofits and businesses find that government funding helps to seed or support their projects when private philanthropy doesn’t. Our team supports your quest in securing federal, state, and local government support by working with your internal stakeholders from start to finish, taking into consideration the competitive landscape, demographic and cultural contexts, DEIA efforts, organizational capacity and strengths, and your overall competitive edge. We help with all aspects of grant writing, including strategy, research, program design, project management, evaluation, project management, writing and submission. Our team offers this service priced per grant or on annual retainer for organizations who anticipate a higher volume of need.

Our Fundraising Assessments examine your fundraising programs from top to bottom, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to help identify areas of strength and opportunities for growth. From there, we partner with you to create an annual Fundraising Plan, complete with strategies to grow and diversify lines of revenue, deepen donor relationships, prioritize staff and monetary resources, and build capacity in fundraising, so that you can reach your organization’s short and long-term goals and fundraising potential.

You know you need a more robust fundraising program, but where do you start? You call us. Really.

All too often, organizations believe they need to start their program by hiring a development director, but that strategy is very costly, sometimes cost prohibitive, and requires a financial outlay for about three to five years before you can expect to see a positive return. Well-resourced organizations might do this, but others cannot. There is a better way.

We identify the steps you need to take to begin building your fundraising program, prioritizing lean strategies that generate revenue and begin to build your donor base quickly. We help you understand the initial volume of work and the staffing resources you need, so that you use your resources well. Often, a modest consulting engagement can lay the foundation for your program, help you to start raising money, and ready your group for its first full-time hire. It can also test the waters on fundraising capacity and results before you commit to hiring staff.

Our team has built fundraising programs and departments from the ground up, securing and deploying resources, hiring staff, onboarding CRMs, and building first-tier fundraising programs that yield return on investment, build donor relationships, and functionalize fundraising for organizations like yours. Bringing us in is an affordable solution to upstart quickly and with expertise, readying your organization and its future staff for success.

Ready to transform your revenue through sustainable earned strategies? We can help! There are lots of ways that nonprofits diversify their revenue while doing good in this world, and one way is by developing a social enterprise. Adding a new “business” venture to your organization can transform the way you meet your mission. Common examples include coffee shops, thrift stores, and pay-it-forward retail programs; the opportunities are endless but need a strong business plan to start-up, survive, and thrive. Our team has built social programs, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses, and can help you design your newest venture, transforming the ways you’ve generated revenue for your cause. And, yes, that includes start-up and growth strategies, competitive market analysis, business planning and development, and sustainability plans.

We also assist clients in accessing capital through nontraditional lending through unique programs offered by nonprofit organizations and economic investment councils.

Want a partner to help with strategy, coaching, guidance, and mentorship? Our strategic consulting gives you a partner who offers advice and support to help through your next campaign or to stand up or grow your fundraising efforts.

Finding the right fundraising talent can be a challenge. Whether you need coverage during your search, you can’t seem to find the right talent, or you need bandwidth but not full time staffing, we can help. Raise the Bar offers interim engagements and long-term fractional staffing for fundraising positions, including but not limited to: Vice Presidents of Advancement/Philanthropy, Chief Development Officers, Development Directors, Development Managers, Gift Officers, and grant writer positions.

Our team of uniquely qualified and experienced consultants are available to assist on a short-term basis or as a longer-term partner, helping you to handle essential fundraising work while assessing your staffing needs for the long run. When you’re ready to hire, we can lead and support your search as part of our engagement, helping you to find talent that matches your organization’s unique needs.