Winter Newsletter – Boards that fundraise + client spotlight

By Schonfield Consulting | February 12, 2024 |

Happy New Year from Schonfield Consulting! Since several of our clients wrapped up successful fundraising efforts in 2023, we’re focusing this newsletter on fund development and what your organization can do in 2024 to increase your impact.

We’d love to hear from you about your fundraising successes or challenges in 2023 and where you’re headed in 2024.

As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s powerful legacy this week, here’s to a new year of peace, impact and positive change ahead!

In partnership,

Anne and the Schonfield Consulting Team

Fundraising 101: How to Fully Engage Your Board

When we interviewed a new client in late 2023, one of their initial questions was how to more effectively involve their Board in fundraising. This client recently held a successful gala event (with a lot of Board support and involvement) but wanted to further engage the Board. Here are some tips:

100% Board giving: Many organizations have an implicit understanding that their Boards will help raise funds, but don’t explicitly specify that in Board job descriptions or recruitment. We suggest that 100% of Board members commit to “give or get” donations — they can either give personally or work with staff to approach donors. The amount of each Board member’s donation isn’t as important as the fact that 100% of the Board contribute whatever they can financially.

The power of asking: Many Board members are willing to help raise funds, but are reluctant to ask or don’t know how to ask donors for support. We often advise clients that there are many potential donors who want to support your organization’s hard work, but if you don’t ask, they won’t give! We train Boards on how to ask most effectively and work with staff on clear instructions to Boards for how and when to cultivate donors.

With the right training and skills, your Board can be a powerful fundraising tool for your organization!

Learn more about our consulting services

Client Spotlight: Berkeleyside

Berkeleyside is a pioneering nonprofit digital news platform reporting on arts, business, culture and other breaking news in Berkeley and the Bay Area. Along with its “sister site” Oaklandside, they reach over 500,000 readers each month, with high impact, local news coverage. We’ve worked with Cityside (parent organization of Berkeleyside + Oaklandside) since early 2020 on fundraising support, including foundation strategy, prospect research, and donor outreach. We helped Cityside to identify 50+ “best fit” foundations, and continue to work with their team on how to most effectively approach funders. With our support, Cityside raised significant funding from foundations and other donors in 2023.

Learn more about Berkeleyside

Need support with your fundraising or strategic plan?
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Tagged Berkeleyside, Fundraising, Hiring, Strategic Planning

"Anne is the quintessential consultant — she listens well, asks good questions, is easy to work with, and a great "thought partner." She is the person you want on your team if you want to get s**t done and not waste time. I will work with Anne anytime."

“Anne and her team bring a wealth of experience in process design, community investment best practices, and clarity of objectives and program metrics. I would definitely recommend Schonfield Consulting for their rigor and drive to achieve results.”

“Anne and her team played an integral role in designing and implementing Well Being Trust's grant making. Anne is extremely efficient and good at moving things forward. I value Anne’s input tremendously and appreciate her warm and positive manner.”

“Anne and Amy did a marvelous job with our strategic plan -- sensitive to the needs of staff, leadership and Board; focused and efficient; encouraging and relentless. Hidden Villa made an excellent choice to work with Schonfield Consulting.”

“Anne is brilliant at strategic planning. She worked with the NRDC India team to chart our vision and plan for two plans spanning 10 years. She guided a tough task to successful completion by keeping us on target. I highly recommend Anne!”

"Anne is a pleasure to work with and guides you through the difficult strategic planning process with thoughtfulness, passion, and a great work ethic!”

"The ABPAS business plan that Schonfield Consulting helped us develop clearly explains our mission to investors and donors. The research Eva did was comprehensive and well-presented. The services provided by Anne and Eva can definitely help propel many other agencies like ours.”

"We needed someone who was independent, highly focused and knowledgable about capturing data from nonprofits. The final report was excellent. Thanks for taking on Fresno!"

"Anne is a valued colleague and I highly recommend her to anyone needing a top notch consultant... The quality of her work is excellent and her ability to turn it around quickly was very impressive."

"Thank you for carrying us through this process. The end result is pretty dramatic, thanks to your careful eye, your methodical work, and your creative suggestions. You’re a superstar!"

"From her insights into fundraising, to her pointed questions on strategy and her well-organized agendas -- Anne's support has been invaluable. Anne has great energy and is an important member of the TAHMO team."

"Anne has done excellent consultancy work. Her research and review of grant materials produced high quality outputs—she asked tough questions and delivered on time. I would highly recommend Anne."

"That was a great event. Thanks so much for a fantastic facilitation – you know your job and you do it very well! I'm already looking forward to next year’s meeting."

"Working with Anne was extremely excellent! We were very happy with the board retreat and initial strategic planning. The summary report from the retreat is great and goes a long ways to setting a future agenda for CCS."

"Thanks for the excellent job on the case studies. I presented your work at the convening and it garnered a lot of attention. I’m excited to see how things move forward!"

"It was a pleasure working with Schonfield Consulting on our health program evaluation. Anne was super thoughtful and organized, and helped us translate lots of data into a very useful product for our Board."

“Anne provides us with excellent fundraising advice. She put a lot of time and thinking into an excellent fundraising retreat with Board and staff. We did some darn good work and had a good time doing it!”