Recent years have brought steady but uninspiring growth in giving. Yet throughout 2017, we found organizations beating the odds and raising dollars in eye-popping numbers. Here are their stories and the strategies that paid off.
1. How I Went From Zero to $40 Million
When fundraiser Anna Barber came to the Smithsonian to help launch its National Museum of African American History and Culture, supervisors asked her to secure $10 million in support from California, where she had few connections. Yet she raised four times that target, thanks to shoe-leather salesmanship and doggedness.
2. Tapping Into the Trump Effect
Early in 2017, we reported on how the American Civil Liberties Union was turning outrage over the new president’s rhetoric and policies into donations. Less well known is the story of how PEN America — a small, once-quiet organization founded to advance literature — became an aggressive defender of free expression and more than doubled its giving.
3. $6 Billion and Counting ...
The University of Southern California emerged this year as a fundraising juggernaut as it closed in on an audacious $6 billion campaign goal (this despite news that a medical dean and fundraiser was leading a double life filled with drugs and prostitutes). The institution’s chief development officer shared some of the campaign’s secrets with The Chronicle.
4. Winning the Hearts of Millennials
The United Way of Metropolitan Dallas is finding new ways to make the venerable social-service giant relevant to younger generations and the wealthy. It’s tapping big gifts, rethinking the workplace campaign, and putting on the glitz.
5. People and Talent First
A Google alumna is helping Hillel International persuade supporters that good pay and training for staff are critical to success. The message has helped net $50 million in donations, including one of the largest grants in the group’s history.
6. Lighting a Fire Under Big Donors
The University of Florida put together incentives to give donors and fundraisers impetus to close seven-figure gifts. The result: 73 gifts or pledges of $1 million or more in one year.
7. How Technology Can Deepen a Relationship
Child sponsorship is a tried-and-true means of winning support for global relief efforts. When Compassion International took the idea into the digital age, it forged a deeper connection with donors.
8. Finding New Supporters — and New Ideas — in Data
Mental Health America was faltering until a new president pushed it to modernize and use numbers to better understand its supporters. The result: Revenue grew from $2.7 million to $4.1 million.
9. Lessons of a $127 Million Success
The North Texas Food Bank’s rise to become one of America’s largest nonprofits was fueled by the growth and maturation of a fundraising program that started with a scrappy, “say yes to everything” mentality. Colleen Brinkmann, chief philanthropy officer, talks about what’s changed and what’s worked.
10. How Women Powered Big Giving
Dartmouth alumna Catherine Briggs talks about the creation of a giving campaign focused exclusively on women making gifts of $100,000 or more. The college was skeptical about a volunteer-led, big-gift effort targeting just alumnae — only to see it raise nearly $15 million in about three months.
