Each client situation is different and requires different services. JGA works individually with your organization to customize the combination of core services that best meets your needs. We also go beyond traditional services to create solutions tailored to your organization’s special situations. Below is an overview of the continuum of JGA’s core advancement services.

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A Chance to Take a Fresh Look at Your Organization

• How do others see your nonprofit organization?
• Do key volunteers, board members, staff, and donors share a common vision?
• Is your community knowledgeable about your accomplishments?
• How can you determine if those involved with your organization are firmly committed to its mission?

An initial philanthropic analysis allows your organization to see itself as others do. The initial philanthropic analysis identifies critical issues likely to help or hinder your fundraising efforts, offers an action plan for strengthening your resource development program, and provides a solid strategic base for timely fundraising success. Because of this early work, your organization is prepared for success from the start.

The Development Audit—

A Key Step in Building Organizational Capacity

• What are the strengths and challenges of your development program?
• What can you do—both short-term and long-term—to increase your program’s effectiveness and maximize fundraising results?

A development audit presents an objective overview of your current fundraising efforts and offers recommendations for enhancing strategies, tactics, and performance. The audit includes discussions with your resource development team. In addition, a quantitative analysis of internal data examines your cost to raise a dollar, return on investment, and other benchmarks to determine how effectively your resources are being used. Keying in on strengths and challenges forms the basis for developing future goals.

Strategic Capacity Building —

Focusing on Your Program

• How does your organization prepare for intensified fundraising work?
• How can you more effectively cultivate and solicit major gifts?

Strategic capacity building is highly action-oriented. Guided by JGA, your resource development team forms a firm foundation for future campaign efforts by addressing key organizational issues, developing written cultivation and solicitation strategies for major donors, enhancing prospect management, and putting in place or retooling resource development systems.

Pre-Campaign Planning and Case Statement Development—

The Roadmap for Success

• How does your organization need to sequence campaign communications?
• How do you best articulate your value as a philanthropic investment?

Pre-campaign planning readies your organization to answer the numerous questions your donors and your community will have about the campaign and your organization’s future plans. During this phase, JGA helps you develop a strategy that is a custom fit for your organization’s unique circumstances and works with you to identify the key factors that must be considered in designing your preliminary campaign plan and feasibility study. JGA also helps you develop a preliminary case statement, a written document that articulates the reasons your organization deserves the support of donors.

The Feasibility Study—

Testing Your Campaign Plans

• Will your donors support your campaign?
• How do you gauge the probability of achieving campaign success?

A feasibility study is active capital campaigning and is an integral part of the cultivation and involvement process of major donors and prospects. A feasibility study tests your organization’s aspirations with top donors as well as organizational and community leadership. Through high-level, confidential discussions, JGA discovers objective and subjective factors that may affect a donor’s desire to give—or withhold—support. By giving donors an early opportunity to listen, become involved, indicate their possible level of support, and voice their interests and their hopes for your campaign, your organization can more effectively and more successfully address the vital personal and tactical aspects of donor relationship building and cultivation. As part of a feasibility study, JGA also works with your organization’s leadership to recommend a campaign goal, design a campaign structure, develop a timetable and sequence of action, and establish an overall strategy for cultivating and soliciting the lead gifts to kick off your campaign.

Campaign Counsel—

Your Guide to Achieving Campaign Success

• How do you execute your campaign plan?
• How can you make sure your development team has the support they need to make the campaign a success?
• What can you do to keep donors involved long after the campaign is over?

Active campaigning is the most demanding, intensive work that your resource development team will ever experience. Campaign counsel provides advice, guidance, and encouragement to your staff and volunteers throughout the campaign. We guide your team in integrating campaign work with your ongoing resource development concerns and assure that your campaign proceeds smoothly, strategically, and successfully. We also help your team develop a plan for informing donors about their philanthropic investment and keeping them interested in your organization long after the campaign is over.