Nonprofit Enterprise Fundraising Efforts

Libertae’s Fundraising Plan

Libertae’s funding sources over the past five years have been more or less the same, with a few adjustments regarding smaller events and the availability of eligible grant options. The main sources of funding have been annual giving and event-related fundraising from the annual spring fashion show. Grants come in from time to time from the government, corporate foundations, and private foundations, but there is no guarantee that these will be received in any given year. As the organization evolves, it plans to add other sources of revenue to support its work. The overall goal for this fundraising plan is to increase revenues from $3 million to $4 million over the next year. To realize this goal, this plan proposes the expansion of corporate support and online fundraising, as well as programs for cultivating individual donors. The plan focuses on raising the following categories of gifts:

a) Unrestricted gifts through individual donor and corporate support under the united Way and Employer Matching Gifts program

b) Restricted gifts through foundation support

c) Gifts for physical capital through Major Donors

d) Gifts for financial capital through the annual Fashion Show and Hosted activities

The plan includes the following activities or action plans:

Annual Giving (Regular Memberships)

Annual giving covers all contributions made to the organization that are not based on a purchase, event, or other exchange (Greenfield, 2004). In essence, it is a charitable investment in the work of the organization by other people committed to the same values and goals (Greenfield, 2004). The organization accepts any amount of contribution towards its activities, although all requests for support start with a minimum of $50. This plan categorizes annual giving into two: regular memberships (contributions of $500 and below) and major donor memberships (contributions above $500). The major donor category is discussed as one of the fundraising sources below.

For Libertae, membership is a conceptual term associated with the provision of financial support to the organization, and not a legal definition based on payment of certain dues. For this plan, the annual giving program focuses on realizing two objectives: a) devising strategies for efficiently targeting existing individual donors to increase their gifts, and b) attracting new individual donors. To generate membership contributions of not more than $500, Libertae will employ three primary strategies:

a) Acquisition efforts to seek initial contribution from new members, which will be carried out primarily through direct mailing solicitations, email blast solicitations, #Giving Tuesdays, and end-of-year solicitation activities. The organization will begin direct mail solicitations again after they were halted several years ago, because they showed success when they were utilized, bringing in approximately $15,000. As the email blast solicitations, #Giving Tuesdays, and end-year solicitations have not been very effective, they will be retained, although more funds will be dedicated towards direct mailing efforts.

b) Renewals seeking to continue the support of existing contributors and encouraging them to renew their annual giving will be carried out. The organization will employ several strategies to encourage contributors to renew their membership. First, the organization will initiate a ‘Thank-You’ procedure that will focus on sending thank-you notes to all gift-givers. All first-time donors will, regardless of the size of their contribution receive an invitation to a non-ask thank-you event. The non-ask event is an inexpensive event to be organized for all donors at the end of the year. The non-ask event will be an open bar and will focus on thanking the donors for their support, reinforcing the organization’s mission, and providing means for the donors to interact with each other as well as with the organization’s employees and volunteers.

c) Special appeals will be written and sent out to all current contributors every three months to encourage additional contributions to Libertae’s good work through additional contributions to support specific highly-beneficial projects.

Annual Giving (Major Donors)

The ‘major donor’ category includes individuals giving a cumulative total of $500 or more in contributions. The organization currently operates two programs under the ‘Major Donors’ category:

a) The commemorative giving program, which allows individuals to make a donation in someone’s honor with a remembrance or celebration card

b) The Planned Giving program, which provides a means for donors to consider the organization as a beneficiary of a bequest from their estate.

The objective in regard to major donors is to increase gifts for physical capital by $500,000. The organization will retain both the commemorative and planned giving programs over the coming year. However, revenues from bequests and commemoration are generally unknown and it may be difficult to plan for them in the annual budget. For this reason, funds from both bequests and commemorations will be used in capacity-building efforts or dedicated to the organization’s endowment, unless the donor states otherwise.

To increase revenues, the organization will, this year, commence a board giving campaign, which is a once-per-year fundraising drive that focuses on getting all of the organization’s directors to make contributions towards budgeted activities. The gifts will be considered ‘board gifts’ and will be unrestricted, general donations that are over and beyond any contributions that board members make towards the annual fund drives and events (Kilkenny Children’s Home, 2019). Sources suggest that board giving campaigns be held at the same time every year to allow returning board members to know when to expect the drive and to plan accordingly (Kilkenny Children’s Home, 2019). For this reason, the board giving campaigns will be scheduled for June every year, and the board chairman will be responsible for sending out letters of the next campaign to members through snail mail by the end of every year. The organization expects to raise revenues of $400,000 from the board giving campaign annually. At the start of every year, the board will make a financial pledge during the annual giving roll-out, although the funds would not be received until June. This way, the board would serve as a leadership component in the organization’s annual giving program (Kilkenny Children’s Home, 2019).

All Major Donors will be regarded as high-level donors of the organization and will be accorded a more personalized process of solicitation and recognition. The Major Donors will be engaged through phone calls from the development director once a contribution is received, and one-on-one meetings with the executive management team during non-ask events (Kilkenny Children’s Home, 2019). The phone calls will be focused on thanking the donors for their support, while the one-on-one meetings will focus on reinforcing the organization’s mission, and notifying the donors of the progress made in that year and the plans for the next year. Interim and annual reports to major donors will be sent by snail mail and will be accompanied by a questionnaire seeking to obtain their views on the reported activities. As a way of retaining their commitment, the development director will organize annual recognition events for major donors. Recognition will be anything from breakfast with a representative from one of the organization’s mid-level donors to lunch with the executive director, and a commemorative plaque in the case of gifts for physical capital (Kilkenny Children’s Home Development Plan, 2019).

Corporate Support

Libertae runs two corporate support programs:

a) The Employer Matching Gifts program, where corporations offer support the organization by matching an employee’s charitable contributions through a Matching Gifts Program

b) The United Way Contributor, where corporations conduct campaigns in which participating employees get to designate all or part of a gift to Libertae.

The organization has reported moderate success in generating financial support from both of these sources and will thus retain them for the next year. The United Way Campaign has been a beneficial source of unrestricted revenues for Libertae. One problem that the organization has experienced in regard to corporate contributions is the high administrative costs that accompany the contributions. The organization would have preferred to receive contributions directly to minimize the administrative costs of the United Way Contributions. However, the management appreciates that the United Way Campaign provides many prospects as many people who might be inclined to contribute through the United Way may otherwise not contribute at all.

For this reason, Libertae will focus on enhancing the visibility of the United Way Campaign by including information on these campaigns in appropriate prospect and donor communications this year. This will help to attract more corporates to partner with Libertae through the United Way Campaign program and hence, increase revenues generated from the campaigns. In the second year of the plan, Libertae will focus on researching additional ways of marketing the United Way Campaign.

Foundation Support

Libertae faces stiff competition from other nonprofits for foundation support in the form of grants. Generally, revenues from grant funds have been irregular. However, stakeholders contend that the prospect for grants has not been fully utilized. A possible reason for the lax is that the solicitation of grants has been left to the executive director and associate director, who have considerable responsibilities in other areas of the organization and have not been able to give a lot of time to grant-writing and prospecting. This plan focuses on helping the organization aggressively pursue grants as a source of funding its program activities.

In this regard, this plan proposes the hiring of a development director in the first year of implementation, who will be responsible for prospecting for grant funds and writing grant proposals. Owing to resource limitations, no grant-writing staff will be hired during the period of the plan, and the new development director will work with a team of grant-writing volunteers. To promote more sustained and larger gifts, the development director will initiate a program of organizing face-to-face meetings with grant prospects and grant-makers to showcase Libertae’s programs and enhance relationships with these parties. The organization will also invite prospective and current grant makers, including foundation executives, to the annual non-ask events to obtain their views on how the organization could diversify its foundation support. The plan is not only add grant prospects, but also mobilize larger larger grants from existing grant-makers.

Major Event: The Annual Spring Fashion Show

Libertae has had great success with the annual fashion show, with has become the organization’s marquee event. Each of the organization’s funding sources, from corporations to individual donors, are re-solicited each year for the fashion show even if they have made a substantial contribution through other sources. The event has grown into a huge fundraising source, raising profits of between $50,000 and $67,000 annually, and has since been recognized as the official Libertae fundraising event every year. Bingo nights have been successful over the past years in enhancing the visibility of the Libertae fashion show. For this reason, Libertae will retain Bingo Nights for the next year. However, to increase the publicity of the program and hence revenue streams, the organization will focus on introducing headliners, involving celebrities and business partners into the event, and seeking ‘adoption’ of the event by large giving networks such as labor unions (Kilkenny Children’s Home, 2019).