A Community Nonprofit Fights to Raise Its Profile to Win New Supporters

Heritage Community Initiatives, a nonprofit outside Pittsburgh that nearly folded, faces lots of hurdles when it comes to raising money from affluent people. Perhaps the toughest: unfamiliarity.

When the charity asked a potential supporter from a neighboring city to tour its facilities, the man had no idea how to get there.

“I live eight or nine miles from Braddock,” says Erik Sobkiewicz, a Pittsburgh lawyer from a town just up the river from the social-service group. “But I had never been there and didn’t know anything about it.”

While Braddock was well known in its day, that day was decades ago, when the region’s steel mills still thrived. Like so many rust-belt towns, Braddock has struggled since the collapse of the steel industry, its shrunken population buffeted by high levels of unemployment and poverty.

Heritage, which runs job-training, transportation, and early-education programs, has fought back in the past couple of years from its own financial woes. One of its new goals: tripling the amount of money it raises from private sources so it doesn’t have to depend so much on state aid. Government grants make up more than 80 percent of the charity’s revenue.

Heritage is on pace to raise $435,000 this year, up from $350,000 last year, and is moving toward its $1-million goal in five years.

Wealthy Neighbors

The charity has had generous benefactors in the past, but they have mostly fallen away—like the Silberman family, who gave the charity its headquarters building before moving its wholesale-distribution business out of Braddock a few years ago.

When Michele Atkins, the chief executive who has largely orchestrated Heritage’s turnaround, took over two years ago, the charity had a so-called donor list of about 2,500 names. But it was outdated, says Ms. Atkins, and when she and her colleagues made solicitation calls, they discovered that it included people who had never made a gift and some who didn’t even know about Heritage.

Starting almost from scratch, Ms. Atkins determined that the best way to attract donors would be to draw people to Braddock to see first-hand the area and the charity’s work. That yielded positive results with Mr. Sobkiewicz, who became a donor and a board member after his first visit two years ago.

“Braddock, one of the poorest places in the whole country, is right near Shadyside and some of the most affluent places,” he says, referring to a well-to-do neighborhood of Pittsburgh. “We just have to get people to come out and get connected to what’s going on around them.”

More than 100 volunteers got that chance late in 2010 when the charity joined with KaBoom, a national nonprofit that builds playgrounds, to create a recreation space in the middle of Braddock. Heritage is now expecting as many as 500 volunteers from nonprofits and companies, including United Healthcare and PNC Bank, to visit in the coming months to help build a baseball field in town. And the charity recently received a small grant to buy software that will allow supporters to register online for volunteer opportunities.

“Those efforts have added great benefit to the community, and, importantly, they have brought people out to see us,” Ms. Atkins says.

Events in Other Towns

Heritage has also introduced itself to potential new donors on their own turf.

Linda Bucci, owner of an upscale women’s clothing shop in Shadyside, organized a fundraising event at a downtown hotel last month, inviting many of her friends and customers. Called “Chair-ity,” the event featured a cocktail party and a live auction of dozens of kid-size chairs designed, decorated, or refurbished by local artists. Some of the chairs were old ones that Heritage had stored from a preschool center, and all of them will be returned for use by the children.

The event raised $47,000 for the charity. But just as important, it attracted 150 people, many of whom had never before heard of Heritage—or even Braddock—and can now be courted to become loyal supporters.