APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
Partners in Philanthropy Advisory Services uses a proven three-phased approach to move nonprofit organizations toward their goals. We call these phases Discovery, Resiliency, and Sustainability.
DISCOVERY –
PATH TO UNDERSTANDING
We consider the Discovery phase the most critical part of our client journey. Every nonprofit is unique. During this phase, we dive deep into learning about your mission, organizational structure, and existing partners, and we also learn about those you serve. This phase aims to fully understand your organization's strengths and weaknesses to create a focused plan to drive the next steps. Discovery does not end when the next phase begins. Continually assessing where the organization is and where it is heading is essential. This is especially true with new nonprofits early in their maturation process.
Activities Conducted During Discovery:
Comprehensive Organizational Assessment focused on determining the organization's ability to rank high in the most common charity evaluation tools (GuideStar, Charity Navigator, Better Business Bureau).
Development Audit to understand the current state of fundraising.
Database/Documentation Audit to determine where your organization stands with its managing, tracking, and compliance.
Review and assessment of your organization's Strategic Planning and foundational documents.
Marketing assessment to understand your existing mission-related content and drive discussions for expanding and improving it.
Develop a set of fundraising benchmarks agreed upon by both PiP and your organization.
Partners in Philanthropy Advisory Services views its client relationships as partnerships. The Discovery phase relies heavily on a rapid exchange of information and regular open communication between PiP and the YOUR Board and Fundraising Committee. We anticipate the need for a weekly teleconference during the initial 3-month Discovery phase. Once up and running, the teleconferences can be scaled back to monthly or bi-monthly as needed.
RESILIENCY –
BUILDING FOR SUCCESS
Nothing we do matters unless we can deliver on increasing our client's capacity to serve its benefactors through increased availability of funding resources. This is at the heart of what we will do for you during the Resiliency phase. Funding to support your mission can come from many sources. Our custom-tailored Frontline Fundraising and Development Services are the key to meeting the agreed-upon fundraising benchmarks. Here is a summary of those services.
Development Planning
Each year, we will create a new plan to build on the successes and address the previous year's challenges. Development plans work alongside your organization's strategic planning process to provide a blueprint and action plan for fundraising. The Development Plan will drill deep into categories such as foundation grants, corporate giving, events, campaigns, and major donors to provide a work plan and realistic projections for fundraising for the year. Depending on your organization's needs, our development plan can include the targeting of any of the following:
Identifying prospects and individualized cultivation strategies to obtain Major Gifts.
Development and cultivation of Membership Programs or Partnership Councils to increase membership and participation.
Expansion of event revenues through monetization of summits or special events.
Development and execution of Structured Giving Campaigns.
Cultivation of Planned Giving opportunities.
Developing third-party partnerships to create passive opportunities for exposure and funding.
Engagement with Corporate Giving programs to create new partnerships involving sponsorship and awareness generation.
Sourcing private and public sector grants with an eye towards unrestricted capacity building.
Pipeline Management.
We create a "Pipeline," a virtual dashboard and calendar to track submissions, deadlines, follow-ups, and reports in real-time. Your organization will receive an updated "Pipeline" monthly, but you can also monitor our activity at any time through a provided link.
Prospecting
Each month, we add prospects to the Pipeline list as new grant cycles open or if we identify other sources that are a good fit for your organization. We also list the Board Member names for each funder to help your organization’s leadership determine if any personal connection exists. We can access premier funder databases such as Foundation Directory Online, GrantsWatch, Instrumentl, and others. Our team researches each prospect and starts cultivating and developing partnerships with them.
Proposal Writing
We write, organize, and coordinate all activities to submit proposals for foundations; local, state, and federal governments; banks and other private entities; individuals; and corporate giving programs. A representative at your organization will generally submit final products that need live signatures. With the organization's input, we complete the entire process for online applications and other applications. We utilize our Senior Advisors to lend credibility to our proposals and include them in various roles, such as Grant Monitoring and Evaluation.
Reporting/ Annual Report Creation
Many funders require mid-term, annual, and final reports to monitor the impact of their funding. We compile the data necessary for these reports and write narratives, often working closely with the Fundraising Committee to obtain information illustrating the effect of each funder's support. At the end of the year, we create a brief annual report to highlight the organization's successes, capture your service numbers, and present your unique story in a visually stimulating document useful for engaging current funders and target prospects.
SUSTAINABILITY –
SAFEGUARDING THE FUTURE
The Sustainability phase sets the stage for Repeat Success and Succession Planning. We will explore longer-term growth and sustainability opportunities. We will take action to improve nonprofit credibility by establishing the proper processes and safeguards to ensure nonprofit compliance with all applicable reporting requirements and laws. We also focus on learning where your organization wants to be 5 or 10 years from today and present strategies for achieving the longer-term goals.
One of our core beliefs is that every nonprofit Board of Directors should have a Succession Plan. Too often, organizations doing great work falter due to unplanned leadership changes. One of the Senior Advisors, who has already agreed to work with us on your project, literally wrote the book on succession planning for organizations. Bradley Franc's book, The Succession Solution: The Strategic Guide To Business Transition, is an Amazon Bestseller and is considered to be the blueprint for organizational succession planning.
ADVISORY SERVICES-
FRONT-LINE FUNDRAISING AND DEVELOPMENT
Development Planning
Development plans work alongside your organization's strategic planning process to provide a blueprint and action plan for fundraising. The Development Plan will drill deep into categories such as foundation grants, corporate giving, events, campaigns, and major donors to provide a work plan and realistic projections for fundraising for the year.
Pipeline Management
Organizations hire Wild Fundraising to help them attain their annual fundraising goals. We begin by creating a "Pipeline," which is a dashboard containing all the pertinent information about upcoming, submitted, and declined requests. "Pipelines" live in a centralized location where the client organization's team will have all past, present, and upcoming grant information at their fingertips. Organizations receive an updated "Pipeline" monthly or are provided a link with access to the information in real-time via Dropbox or Google Docs. Our team tracks each request and often personally contacts funders before submission, as well as conducts follow-up when appropriate. To us, the "Pipeline" serves as a dashboard/calendar to ensure that we (and you) can keep track of submissions, deadlines, follow-ups, and reports at any time.
Prospecting
Each month, we add prospects to the Pipeline list as new grant cycles open or we identify other sources that may be a good fit for the client organization. We can also list the Board member names for each funder to help Board and leadership determine if any personal connection exists. We have access to premier funder databases such as Foundation Directory Online, GrantsWatch, and Instrumentl. Our team researches each prospect and establishes a connection through email or phone conversations when feasible to render a higher success rate.
Reporting/ Annual Report Creation
Many funders require mid-term, annual, and/or final reports to monitor the impact of their funding. We compile the data necessary for these reports and write narratives, often working closely with program staff to obtain information illustrating the impact of each funder's support. At the end of the year, when appropriate, we create a brief annual report to highlight the client organization's successes, capture your service numbers, and present your unique story in a visually stimulating way for funders and prospective funders. The annual reports are generally appropriate to be included in annual appeals and on websites.
Proposal Writing
We write, organize, and coordinate all the details necessary to submit proposals for foundations, local, state, and federal government, banks, individuals, and corporate giving programs. Final products that need live signatures will generally be submitted by a representative at your organization. With the organization's input, we complete the entire process for online applications and other applications that do not require a live signature.
Archive Audits
When necessary, typically during times of transition or leadership changeover, we audit previous grant files, to catch any reporting deadlines that may have been missed or any funding opportunities that may have lapsed.
Database Management
Our team can manage data entry, acknowledgment letter generation, and donor report generation for Software (Donor Perfect), Blackbaud (Raiser's Edge, Etapestry), Salesforce, Bloomerang, Little Green Light online, and Past Perfect (Museum/Collections) donor management/CRM systems.
Major Donor Identification
Depending on the project, Wild Fundraising uses programs like Donor Search to map connections between supporters and Marketsmart to identify donor-advised funds. Significant research goes into researching prospective major donors and cultivating an approach.
Event Sponsorships and Auction Items
The team maintains an extensive database of monetary and in-kind event sponsors to help make your fundraising event a success. In-kind support often includes donated tickets, memorabilia, and experiences to be auctioned off at silent or live auctions or even event raffles. We create sponsorship deck materials and manage most aspects of research, outreach, and follow-up to raise additional awareness and funding for your event.
Annual Giving Campaigns
For international campaigns like Giving Tuesday, and local giving campaigns in your community (like Give NOLA), or any other occasion, we design and implement an exciting multichannel digital and/or printed letter campaign that engages your supporters and connects your nonprofit with new audiences and donors.
