CauseMic Amplify: A two-day workshop to revitalize your nonprofit’s approach to fundraising and marketing   Learn more
Skip to main content CauseMic
Let's get started

Year End Donations Fund Running Water

Case Study

Capital Campaign & Year-End Fundraising

The Stissing Center

Supporting a creative, engaged, diverse, connected, and thriving community of Pine Plains and the region

The Challenge

Located in the small, rural town of Pine Plains, New York, The Stissing Center features a venue that partners with “artists, individuals, and organizations to create meaningful programs, events, and opportunities.” Its ongoing slate of varied activities brings world-class music and theater performances as well as opportunities to learn the arts to community members of all ages. This venue also bolsters local businesses by creating a special destination for visitors.
 
The Stissing Center was set to embark on a $10 million capital campaign to complete renovation of their historic brick building and to fund long-term operational needs.
 
Concurrently, they needed to increase their annual fundraising to maintain operations—all of which was a challenge due to their extremely limited internal capacity.

Moreover, though most funding comes primarily from out-of-town visitors, The Stissing Center wanted to ensure they maintained their unity with the local citizens.

 

Their challenges were essentially framed by three questions we needed to address:

  • How do we prioritize which donors to contact first for our capital campaign, and how much should we ask for?
  • What types of materials do we need to present to early-phase prospects to launch the capital campaign?
  • How do we craft annual fundraising messaging that will inspire the community to support us now as well as prepare them for the launch of our capital campaign?

 

Our Solution

We deployed the following actions to address The Stissing Center’s challenges and questions:

  •  We helped The Stissing Center launch their capital campaign with messaging carefully crafted to show how it will enhance the lives of both locals and tourists.
  • To promote the capital campaign, we worked with The Stissing Center to develop case for support documents (both digital and print) and a pitch deck to present to initial donor prospects.
  • To prioritize capital campaign prospects for the first round of solicitations, we worked with The Stissing Center to develop a gift pyramid based on their history of giving and other key data points gleaned from wealth screening. We then utilized a formula to create bold but appropriate ask amounts to support the three-year campaign.
  • Focusing on the power of their rural community, we utilized audience segmentation in the year-end fundraising campaign to ensure our targeted messaging reached the right folks.
  • Our core messaging for year-end fundraising focused on creating a sense of pride in the community by positioning the role The Stissing Center has in making Pine Plains such a special place. We also mentioned the upcoming capital building expansion and created a distinct audience segment consisting of potential donors for both efforts. Lastly, we informed the local citizenry that the Executive Director would be reaching out with a meeting to discuss The Stissing Center’s plans.

The Results

Capital campaign primed for a successful launch

$230,000

Year-end fundraising (95% increase year-over-year)

“Year-end fundraising can be completely unpredictable and challenging for many non-profits, but for the USA Basketball Foundation this was our best year to date; and that had a lot to do with the support, collaboration, and insight received from the CauseMic crew (huge shoutout to Andrew, Karla, Abby, and Franny—the Dream Team!).

I am extremely thankful for our partnership and look forward to generating more revenue so that the USAB Foundation can continue to positively impact the lives of the communities we serve.”

Jennifer Lynne Williams
Chief Development Officer

How we can help you maximize year-end fundraising

Whether year-end or year-round, successful fundraising campaigns start with an actionable plan. Whatever your constraints, we can help plan and execute yours!  

A collage of CauseMic leadership