“One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals.” – Jean Vanier. Having a support system to fall back on when raising kids is so important, and it is even more so when kids have life-threatening chronic illnesses, developmental disabilities, and special needs.
But not everyone can afford that extra care. Fortunately, there is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to the mission of providing support to socio-economically diverse families. They conduct multiple camp sessions throughout the year at no charge. Over the last few decades, they have served more than 45,000 children and provided support to nearly 80,000 families in Northern California.
However, the organization was lacking a strong and sustainable donor base which was hindering them from continuing their mission. With a very limited presence on social media, they were also unable to reach potential donors. They also realized that the organization needed to put in place an efficient donor database management system, a process to measure organizational performance, and a strong vision statement.
In order to help the organization and keep the mission going, they approached CLASS. With a clear-cut goal to help the organization continue serving the community, the team at CLASS worked in tandem with the organization’s leadership and identified 4 key focus areas. They included defining the organization’s vision & mission statement; creating a donor development plan; devising a social media strategy; and recommending a donor database management system.
CLASS needed to understand the organization’s past and present donors’ demographics, cause a match, donor acquisition methods, and repeat donors. Therefore, CLASS met with the organization and discussed the team’s details of their donor base, present outreach and acquisition, and other fundraising sources like grants. It came to light that the organization was heavily reliant on individual donors, lacked repeat and online donors, and had very limited corporate donations.
In today’s social media-reliant world, it is very important for organizations to have a unique voice that can help cut through the noise and reach the right audience at the right time. By putting the organization’s core ideas and comfort zone in focus, CLASS was able to review the organization’s present and past social media activities and audit the website while keeping in mind industry standards and best practices. The marketing team at CLASS was then able to create a strong social media strategy built upon the organization’s brand perception, target audience, and familiarity with various social media platforms.
One of the most crucial tools for a non-profit organization is a donor management system. CLASS assessed the organization’s existing systems and realized that the current technology in use was outdated and needed to be revamped. With the help of CLASS, they were able to come up with a plan to optimize their resources, as was necessary for their small team.
CLASS was successfully able to identify key problem areas and goals of the organization. By measuring the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be, CLASS provided a comprehensive solution for each focus area. Ensuring that limitations and challenges unique to the organization were incorporated, CLASS looked at best practices and present trends to tailor each of the solutions that were presented.
As a result of the recommendations made by CLASS, the organization saw tremendous change and growth. They implemented a marketing solution which helped them attract more clients, donors, and volunteers. They have seen a jump of over 50% in repeat donors, while funding has increased by over 10%. Traffic to social media pages and website visits has grown by over 20% with the help of an effective social media plan developed by CLASS. The organization has seen amazing growth and success and was very impressed with the work CLASS delivered.
Want to learn more about the solutions and analysis we performed to help this client? Read the complete case study here.
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About The CLASS Consulting Group
The CLASS Consulting Group is a trusted advisor to the boards of directors and senior leadership of the bay area nonprofit organizations. It is a boutique management consulting firm headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides consulting services to senior management and boards of directors of nonprofit organizations and offers community leadership opportunities to professionals.
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