Marking Charity Milestones

Anniversary celebrations can draw attention and dollars

When the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council reached its 20th year of operations in 2002, officials decided to mark the milestone with a special dinner featuring the actor Danny

Glover and start the charity’s first capital campaign. The dinner raised $120,000, more than double the amount of past events, and the group eventually completed its $2.5-million campaign.

“People didn’t realize we had been around that long,” says Donald G. Block, the group’s executive director. “Stressing the anniversary made them aware this was an organization with a track record and it was not brand new.”

Many charities seize the opportunity presented by anniversaries — 25 years, 100, even 16 — to tout past accomplishments and announce future plans as a way to increase contributions.

Some groups simply throw a big birthday bash or insert a special logo on materials sent to donors, while other charities use the occasion to overhaul the organization’s look and how it makes its appeals. However, focusing on anniversaries can sometimes result in very little financial gain in exchange for the hours of staff members’ time spent. In addition, some fund-raising consultants say significant anniversaries alone are not enough to garner additional support.

“People continue to care about the issues and not about anniversaries,” says Kay P. Lautman, a fund-raising consultant in Washington. “It doesn’t hurt anything, but it’s not the golden bullet. Your cause is the golden bullet.”

Parties and Reunions

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, with headquarters in Philadelphia, focused on both its cause and its longevity when it marked its centennial in 2004-5.

The charity published a book with 100 stories of successful matches between adult mentors and needy children, to help inspire donors to give. Fund raisers used the stories when they solicited individuals, whom the charity had not previously made much effort to reach, in an effort to start raising more money to quadruple the number of people it serves to one million.

The stories “demonstrate much more than statistics do what happens when you add a volunteer to the life of a child,” says Mack Koonce, the group’s chief operating officer. And, he adds, “it helps people see the urgency of matching people today.”

From 2003 to 2004, the group’s revenue grew by 12 percent, to $234-million, and this year he expects growth between 8 percent and 10 percent. The focus on how the group has helped people in the past is “part of the solution that has taken us from 3 to 4 percent revenue growth to 11 to 12 percent growth nationwide,” says Mr. Koonce.

Using the centennial to reconnect with the group’s past participants also helped increase donations. A man now in his 30s whom Big Brothers Big Sisters helped when he was a youngster recently gave to the charity for the first time — $500,000, one-third of which he donated, with two-thirds matched by his employer.

In June, the charity held a large reunion event for former volunteers and participants. But, Mr. Koonce says, “no one considers our centennial to be a gala. We consider it to be a campaign that will transform the way we think about the organization for the next 100 years.”

The Western Law Center for Disability Rights, in Los Angeles, also used its 30th anniversary this year to round up former board members and donors.

The anniversary “gave us an opportunity to welcome people back without embarrassment on anyone’s part — or on our part that we hadn’t kept track of everyone,” including former board members and a charity founder, says Randi Sunshine, the group’s director of development. While these past supporters did not make any large gifts, 15 of them attended the group’s November gala, and Ms. Sunshine hopes they will help raise $100,000 for the charity’s first endowment campaign.

Capital Campaigns

The extra attention anniversaries can generate often lead nonprofit organizations to dovetail them with the start or finish of a campaign.

The University of Maryland at College Park is using a gala marking its 150th anniversary later this year to announce its capital campaign, whose goal is expected to be at least $800-million, says William B. Remington, vice president for university relations.

But Maryland is also doing some less conventional fund raising.

At the event next fall, 50 sculptures of turtles, each standing more than four feet high and weighing 100 pounds, will be auctioned to raise money for student scholarships. Before the sale, the turtles, each specially painted or decorated by local artists, will be displayed on or near Maryland’s campus. The turtles represent the university’s mascot, a terrapin, and its popular sports cheer: “Fear the Turtle!”

Earthquakes, not turtles, are feared by officials at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, Calif. The hospital, which opened in 1904, needs to raise $60-million to rebuild the facility to comply with a state law requiring California acute-care hospitals to be able to withstand a major earthquake and remain in operation, says Trisha Brereton, president of the hospital’s foundation.

The group, which had previously earned revenue in ways other than soliciting donations, used its centennial to drum up attention and donations by organizing a gala and placing advertisements on billboards around the county announcing its milestone.

The foundation held a birthday party at the hospital and invited everyone born there to attend by mailing invitations and placing an advertisement in a local newspaper. The party attracted 2,000 people.

The centennial offered a chance to “sit down and say, ‘We have gotten here by the seat of our pants and now we truly need to put together a plan of action,’” says Ms. Brereton. So far, the foundation has raised $2.5-million. “It’s not a huge chunk,” she says. “But the majority of these people didn’t know the hospital existed two years ago.”

For smaller charities that might have formed in someone’s living room, anniversaries provide an opportunity to show supporters how the organization has matured — and to ask donors to increase their gifts accordingly.

Officials at the Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, with headquarters in Middletown, Ohio, decided to stretch their 10th-anniversary celebration in 2004 over two years to revamp the group’s image and start its first capital campaign. In the past decade, the group has grown from a cluster of volunteers helping one another manage their children’s disease to one with professional staff members raising money to support disease research, says Kimberly Galberaith, the group’s associate executive director.

The charity began by redesigning its Web site and changing its logo — from a scribble that looked like a child’s handwriting to a more professional-looking image.

“We are asking for a substantial amount of money,” says Ms. Galberaith. “We wanted to look official and strong.”

The charity, which had previously relied heavily on small events to raise money, sought gifts of at least $25,000 and exceeded its goal to raise $1.5-million to finance research into a potential drug for patients, a novel project for the charity.

“Families would never have given us that money in the first eight years, but by year 10, the organization had proven itself,” says Ms. Galberaith. “We laid the groundwork with a well-crafted plan and message and strong identity, and they trusted us enough.”

The group’s budget increased from $1.8-million in 2003 to $2.8-million this year, and charity officials now plan to start soliciting $1.7-million for the next phase of drug research.

Tying special projects, such as the Parent Project’s drug research, to significant anniversaries has also helped other charities raise money.

For example, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra raised $787,000 for an East Coast tour, which included its debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall, in honor of its centennial in 2003, says Mary Langholz, who until last month was the group’s director of public relations.

And at the Providence Athenaeum, in Rhode Island, the institution’s 250th anniversary in 2003 helped fund-raising officials persuade three foundations to give $22,000 to help produce a natural-history symposium, says Kathleen Bower, a membership assistant at the Athenaeum.

‘Who Cares?’

Some fund-raising consultants recommend skipping anniversaries entirely unless the charity can also trumpet a new program or development.

“Every nonprofit in the universe has an anniversary which to them is significant and to their core constituents is significant. But to the general public, who cares?” says Sarah Durham, founder of Big Duck, a communications company in New York that works with nonprofit groups. “Where an anniversary is helpful for fund raising is as a backup, when you are doing something else.”

Russell F. Robinson, chief executive officer of the Jewish National Fund, in New York, echoes Ms. Durham’s observation. The charity raised $3-million for a new endowment it started in conjunction with its centennial in 2001.

“The anniversary year allowed us a reason to start it,” he says. Anniversaries “may get your askers asking, but I don’t think it necessarily motivates the givers to give.”

The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in Bethesda, Md., also used the occasion of its 50th anniversary, in 2003, to start a $175-million campaign to find a cure. But the campaign’s success — $80-million so far — can be attributed more to the charity’s new effort to solicit individuals rather than a heavy emphasis on the anniversary, says C. Richard Mattingly, the group’s executive vice president. “If it had been our 46th year and we had put the same time and attention to it, we would have done just as well,” he says.

Anniversaries don’t have to come in five or 10 year denominations for some groups to take advantage of their aging process. Visual Aid, a San Francisco group that supports artists with life-threatening illnesses, celebrated its 16th anniversary with a “Sweet 16″ party, the type of affair typically reserved for teenagers.

“People talk about the stages of maturity of an organization, and as we thought about ourselves, we saw that we were growing into adulthood,” says Julie Blankenship, the group’s executive director. “What’s a rite of passage to celebrate that? For many girls, it’s a Sweet 16 party.”

The event was an intentionally campy affair, with guests encouraged to don old prom dresses, wigs, and polyester tuxedos. It raised a little more than $2,000, but, says Ms. Blankenship, it helped the group break out of its usual mold of raising money through art sales.

“We’re already thinking about our 17th,” she says. “We’ll find a theme or a reason for a party every year, and we’ll refine it and build an audience.”

Some groups have used employee anniversaries, instead of a charity’s founding date, as a fund-raising tool.

When Patti Giggans, executive director of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, approached her 20th year at the organization in 2003, a donor offered to match $20,000 in contributions in honor of her longevity. Ms. Giggans sent a mail appeal to donors about the potential matching gift and described the changes she has seen at the group, including its growth from a $150,000 budget to $2-million budget that year. The group got the $40,000.

With anniversaries, Ms. Giggans says, “you get the feeling of taking stock of what you have accomplished, but you are getting revved up about what needs to be done.”

Small Groups

However, a special anniversary has not trumped a tough local fund-raising climate for Covenant House, a social-services group, in Charleston, W.Va. Officials had hoped to mark the group’s 25th anniversary with a $2.5-million endowment campaign — and have raised only $900,000 so far.

“There’s a feeling people are tapped out,” says Erica Pulling, the group’s development coordinator. “And, unfortunately, in our small community there are not that many companies or individuals capable of making really large gifts.”

The Colorado Wildlife Federation, in Wheat Ridge, decided its staff was too small to make any major effort to commemorate the group’s 50th anniversary two years ago, says Wayne East, the group’s executive director.

With a budget of $160,000, and three staff members, Mr. East felt he couldn’t spare time to mark the milestone, even though anniversaries are “a good opportunity to market your organization,” he says. But “you only have so many hours in the day, and you’ve got to estimate what is the best use of your time.”

Still, the pull of celebrating anniversaries persists, even when past fund-raising results don’t meet expectations. Calvary Women’s Services, a charity in Washington that helps homeless women, raised only two-thirds of its $15,000 goal for its 20th anniversary party in 2003, says Kristine K. Thompson, the group’s executive director.

“The goal was to have this really big birthday party, and we had a medium party,” she says.

In retrospect, Ms. Thompson says the charity didn’t take as much time as was necessary to plan the event, which included tracking down past supporters, a task that proved more difficult than anticipated. Still, she says, the group will probably organize another event for its 25th in two years.

Anniversaries “give you a theme that ties directly back to the mission of the organization,” she says. “We can talk about where the organization has been, and where it’s going.”