Industry
Philanthropy and Foundations
Our Role
- Strategic Planning
- Meeting Facilitation
- Donor, Grantee, and other Stakeholder Surveys
- Financial Analysis and asset growth modeling
- Donor and prospect engagement modeling and outreach strategy
Situation
The Community Foundation of Greene County’s mission is to strengthen Greene County by empowering individuals of all backgrounds to support charitable causes for generations to come and provide leadership to address community needs. The organization had grown at a comfortable pace since its founding, to an asset base of about $5M. Seeking to have even more impact, CFGC engaged The Hill Group to help develop a strategic plan and growth plan that could catapult the organization, doubling or tripling its asset value over the next five years.
Solution
Consultants conducted an environmental scan of Greene County to inform planning, surveyed various constituent groups to gather feedback on the Foundation, facilitated a series of planning retreats with staff and board, defined priorities for development, grantmaking, and community leadership, and built a dynamic tool to quantify the outreach and engagement activity that would need to be deployed to garner significant growth of new and existing funds, ultimately to achieve $10-15M in assets. Finally, consultants worked with the Foundation to articulate the structure, including staffing and technology, that would be needed to activate plans and achieve desired results.
Results
- Redefinition of the Foundation's mission, vision, and values statements to focus on empowering philanthropy and creating a culture of giving to bring about a thriving Greene County
- A focused set of goals and action steps for growth, aided by a development tool to drive staff and board activity for new donors
- A refined strategy for grantmaking for county-wide impact with limited funding available
- Identification of the internal infrastructure that would be needed to accommodate new strategies and growth targets
Behind the Scenes
The Community Foundation’s long-tenured staff and engaged Board of Directors was fervently dedicated to improving Greene County and had made an impact through limited grantmaking and many scholarship funds established by generous donors and partners. To set the state for future transformation and growth, The Hill Group harnessed their vision of impact and quantified the types and levels of activity that would be needed to engage more donors and grow by millions of dollars or more. A small but mighty staff would not be able to address all opportunities at once, however, and the critical path to success identified the few key activities and investments that were most likely to set the stage for growth and impact.