Is your endowment fund where you need it to be?  Do you know how you’re going to grow it?  In just a short time, your organization can begin to identify donors who may be interested in making legacy gifts to build your endowment funds.  A strong endowment is a critical component in good stewardship of an organization, helping to secure current support and future success.

Donor By Design Group’s Endowment By Design Program is a step-by-step process to build a new endowment program or revitalize an existing one.  We’ll give you the tools to tell your story, build a case for endowment, identify and educate likely donors.

Key engagement deliverables include:

• Organizational readiness assessment and positioning: Assessment of existing planned giving and endowment programs strengths and weaknesses including: the existing donor base, history of giving, policies, staff and board strength, and donor recognition. This data will assist the organization and consultant in the planning process, setting achievable goals and developing a chart of work for completion of the project.
• Volunteer leadership recruitment, committee structure, and staff and volunteer roles: In partnership with the staff and volunteers, develop committee structure and responsibilities as well as the staff’s role in the program.
• Education of staff and volunteers: On-site training, webinars and conference calls will be used to educate staff and volunteers in all aspects of endowment development.
• Policy review and/or development: Review existing policies and revise or develop new polices to govern gift acceptance, endowment fund investments and distribution of endowment earnings.
• Prospects identification and assessment: Develop research methods for identification and establishment of criteria for rating of prospects with the end result being the identification of the organization’s top endowment prospects.
• Marketing strategy: Includes development of the case and review of literature needs along with design and development of the internal and external marketing strategies.  This project may include educational seminars and small group meetings to promote planned giving. Design and distribution of the Legacy newsletter twice annually is included as part of this projects marketing strategy.  Learn more about Legacy.
• Individual visits to prospects: We will partner with your staff and volunteers to visit the identified top 20 prospects in the first year of the project. Coaching for follow-up visits by staff and or volunteers along with conference calls as needed with the donors, families and professional advisors as needed.
• Donor recognition and stewardship: Planning and design of recognition events, donor awards, year-round stewardship strategies and events.

Through Endowment by Design, your organization’s staff and volunteers will learn how to build the relationships that are at the heart of planned giving.  We’ll help you have conversations that reveal what’s important to the individual donor and our communication tools will help you to show the impact your organization is having on the community.

For more information on how we can help your organization for generations to come, contact us.