9 Things to Know When Starting a Fundraising Program, Courtesy of Those Who’ve Done It

What if every national park in the country were backed by a nonprofit fundraising juggernaut?

That’s perhaps a fantasy, but the National Park Foundation is helping local organizations affiliated with public lands create fundraising operations or ramp up their efforts. The biggest of these so-called friends groups is the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which has raised more than $500 million since it began in 1981. Nonprofits affiliated with major parks like Yosemite also raise large sums.

But most of the more than 200 supporting organizations are small; nearly four in 10 raise less than $50,000 annually.

We spoke with the leaders of three groups that got help from the foundation to start a fundraising program or boost a skeletal operation. All three organizations are small, with revenue of roughly $250,000 to $1 million. None have yet started a major-gifts program.

Here’s their advice.

Find your niche in the philanthropic landscape. The Mississippi Park Connection was founded in 2006 to support the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a 72-mile-long, 54,000-acre stretch of public land running through Minneapolis and St. Paul. The group is based in the Twin Cities, where the National Park Foundation hoped it could capitalize on the riches of the city’s corporate and individual philanthropy.

Katie Nyberg, the group’s executive director, says the first order of business was to study the dozens of organizations that were already raising money for river-related projects or conservation of the area. Supporters included corporations, conservation groups, recreation organizations, and others.

“We had to figure out: What’s special about us?” Nyberg says. The Mississippi Park Connection decided it was best to tie itself closely to the National Park Service, and to focus on connecting people to the park and the experiences it offers. One recent example: Paddle Share, a riff on popular bike-share programs, with kayaks available to rent at locker stations along the river.

Tie initial fundraising to discrete projects. Such work gives you something tangible to talk about with donors, Nyberg says. One of the Mississippi Park Connection’s first big efforts was to double the park service’s youth-education programs. Donors were particularly excited about providing stipends to schools that didn’t have money for transportation or to pay for boat and canoe rentals.

Embrace your small size. The Voyageurs National Park Association, which supports the Park Service in its management of a vast area of woods and waterways in northern Minnesota, had a primitive donor database of only a couple hundred names — not ideal. But Christina Hausman, hired as executive director in 2013, made a point of calling donors to thank them for gifts. Today, “we don’t mail a letter without some sort of personal note on it,” she says. “We celebrate our small size and take advantage of it.”

Go to community foundations for early grants. The South Florida National Parks Trust supports four national parks in southern Florida, including Everglades and Biscayne. Don Finefrock, a former Miami Herald reporter, was new to fundraising when he took the job as executive director but found that some community foundations would guide him through the grant-writing process.

Securing a community-foundation grant gives a new organization credibility in the eyes of other donors. “Once you get that grant, promote it on Facebook and your website,” Finefrock says. “It becomes a kind of stamp of approval.”

Invest in giving-day opportunities to find new donors. Most of the early supporters of Voyageurs National Park were conservationists responding to a threat to the park — a proposed hydroelectric dam, for instance. Some had never even visited the park.

To attract new supporters concerned about the park, the organization joined Give to the Max, Minnesota’s statewide day of giving. The results have been good: Contributions to Voyageurs through the one-day drive have grown from about $2,400 to $13,000. That effort also nets the organization about three-quarters of its new donors each year. The key, according to Hausman: a matching gift from board members to spur donations.

The organization is also working to get its name in front of the roughly 230,000 visitors to the park every year. Hotels and lodges in the area publicize the organization and its events, and the park recently introduced a page on its campsite-reservation system highlighting membership in the group.

Free events can lead to new supporters. Voyageurs generally holds a free public event every quarter, including its Pints for the Park series at local brewpubs. “The more people we get in the door, the more we can ask for donations,” Hausman says.

Recognize the value of volunteers. In 2010, the Mississippi Park Connection paid to hire a full-time National Park Service official to coordinate volunteer programs. The number of volunteers grew from 1,200 to 6,000, each one briefed on the park’s associated nonprofit. “Suddenly, we have a lot more people who hear our message,” Nyberg says.

Encourage corporate volunteer efforts. In recent years, an increasing number of businesses have brought employees to Mississippi Park for volunteer programs. Many of these companies operate globally and don’t typically earmark their philanthropy for local nonprofits, but the volunteers sometimes lobby for funds on behalf of the organization. “These employees become our advocates,” Nyberg says.

Consultants can offer more than direct help. Finefrock occasionally hires consultants, generally with good results. But one of the biggest benefits: They often validate Finefrock’s own fundraising plans to the organization’s leadership. Their advice “gets the board’s attention,” he says. Because they are outside experts, “it carries a little more weight and authority.”