UrbanPromise is a faith-based youth development community anchor that has been deeply embedded in Camden, NJ for more than 30 years. It needed Fairmount to determine how to increase unrestricted funding so that it could increase staff salaries and keep the people who help its youth thrive.
With Fairmount’s fundraising plan and three years of implementation support, Urban Promise exceeded its campaign goals, enabling it to increase staff salaries as a key retention tactic, and significantly advance its fundraising program.
During our first meeting, UrbanPromise said raising unrestricted support was more daunting than a campaign – yet Fairmount’s assessment determined that a campaign was the best way to increase giving by existing donors, attract new ones, and simultaneously develop the organization’s fundraising function. Together, we developed a road map and Fairmount provided a strategic action plan for fundraising followed by three years of strategy, research, writing, facilitation, and coaching support to a five-person staff team (across development, communications, and executive leadership).
Fairmount helped staff develop and operationalize its first formal portfolio approach to donor management, working with UrbanPromise to strategize multi-step cultivation arcs for major donor prospects and segments, bring in the right organizational contacts at the right moments in that process, and ask for what it really needed. This guidance included behind-the-scenes support to help staff mobilize its campaign committee most effectively, resulting not only in new donors, but also new campaign leadership.
More important than exceeding the campaign goal, Fairmount helped the team see the value of more advanced fundraising practices, developed its confidence in having forthright conversations with donors, and helped fundraising staff collaborate more effectively with committee members and with staff from across the organization, all of which will serve UrbanPromise well into the future.
UrbanPromise’s engagement with Fairmount was a game changer for our organization. The process of building a campaign focus, identifying committee members, realigning staff positions, and reengaging donors in new ways not only achieved our campaign goal, but created a stronger and more disciplined fundraising department. Our team “grew up” under Fairmount’s guidance and leadership—the impact in our community will be generational.