February 2, 2017 | Read Time: 3 minutes
With an annual budget below $600,000 and a small staff, the Community Sailing Center in Burlington, Vt., didn’t have many resources for fundraising. For years, the nonprofit operated out of a tent on the shores of Lake Champlain and a decommissioned city building to provide residents with access to recreation on the water.
Its leaders aspired to offer more programming and build a new home with adequate storage, classroom space, and reliable internet service, but “the thought of raising the funds necessary to support a project like that in this community was pretty daunting,” says executive director Mark Naud.
As a first step, the nonprofit applied for tax-increment financing — a subsidy for development and improvement projects in blighted areas — to rehabilitate the site of its proposed new educational campus.
To Mr. Naud’s surprise, this inspired a longtime contributor to give the organization $250,000. The donor believed the nonprofit’s application for financing would be successful and wanted to help carry out its plans, Mr. Naud says.
The donor was right: The bid succeeded. The Community Sailing Center took advantage of $500,000 in tax-increment financing and the quarter-million gift to jump-start its fundraising and launch a capital campaign.
How They Did It
To start, the nonprofit asked a board member to resign in order to hire her as a capital-campaign consultant. The center also hosted lakeside lunches to educate people about its limited resources and show its work in action.
Two large gift commitments signaled early success. First, a local real-estate developer pledged $1 million.
The second donation arose from the community. During one of the waterfront lunches, an attendee approached Mr. Naud and proposed trying to raise $1 million to honor a deceased local businessman who loved sailing. The nonprofit leader accepted, and the man’s friends and family raised $800,000 in 60 days.
“Those two transformational gifts propelled us to pull together a team,” Mr. Naud says.
The center then shifted development responsibilities and beefed up its staff.
Previously, the executive director and marketing coordinator devoted part of their time to raising money. Some of that work was transferred to an associate director of grants, and the center hired a development coordinator, adding an employee dedicated full time to fundraising.
Because they would have so few fundraisers on staff, leaders wanted to ensure that the people in these roles had the “cumulative skill sets for development,” which included managing donor databases and looking after what Mr. Naud calls “the care and feeding of donors.”
“They all need to be engaged and honored and respected,” he says, no matter the size of their gifts.
The extra effort and added staff have paid off. Before the changes, the sailing center raised “a couple hundred thousand a year,” Mr. Naud says. From 2014 through last year, it raised $5.2 million. This past December, the nonprofit received 83 donations totaling around $43,000. Half of the gifts came from new donors.
The money will help the nonprofit’s fundraising become even stronger, Mr. Naud says. Dollars raised during the capital campaign were invested in training board members and staff on developing a culture of fundraising in the organization, cultivating donor relationships, and improving storytelling about the center’s impact.
For other organizations hoping to invest in fundraising and reap a big return, Mr. Naud warns against underestimating the work it takes to cultivate donors, keep them engaged, and communicate regularly.
One key, he says, is to create and share graphics and images that show donors why your work matters. “We did a lot of personal show and tell to convey the challenge/problem, vision, and opportunity.”
