MPS Team Helps Friendship Place Raise Needed Funds

Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It’s important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It’s the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.  –Dorothy Height

MPS Consultants Lily Seglin and Marci Owens began their journey with Friendship Place in October, 2018, when the executive leadership team of the Washington, DC-based nonprofit came to MPS, seeking a strategy for developing new revenue streams. The mission of their organization is to empower people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness, by helping them attain stable housing and rebuild their lives. In 2018, Friendship Place assisted 1,500 families through creative, customized housing solutions, and served more than 3,500 individuals. Now they were concerned that the ambitious goal they had set – securing $200,000 in corporate donations by the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2020 – might not be attainable.

Lily and Marci whipped into action, establishing a baseline of knowledge, by researching corporate fundraising outreach strategies and best practices. After presenting their findings and recommendations, which included a list of local organizations that were interested in helping out in the community, they worked with Friendship Place to develop a clearly defined Corporate Fundraising Outreach Process Plan.

After refining the details of the plan, Lily and Marci moved into Phase Two of the project, which focused on donor outreach. During this process, MPS facilitated weekly check-ins to make sure the staff at Friendship Place had everything in place in order to accomplish their assigned tasks.

The final two weeks were spent fleshing out and finalizing the Outreach Event Plan and Best Practice Plan – the results of all the work they had done together.

The MPS consultants developed a Corporate Development Action Plan that provided specific targets, timelines, and actions, to help implement the Corporate Fundraising Outreach Process Plan and the Donor Outreach Plan. They also wrote up final recommendations for the implementation of the plans, providing insight and clarity on the newly established ground rules and best practices for attracting corporate and individual donors, and suggesting new designs for the donor page on the Friendship Place website.

This project is the second that MPS successfully completed with Friendship Place. “It has been a pleasure to see Friendship Place grow through our partnership,” stated Marci. “Hopefully we can do more with them in the future, and help with their continuous development as a nonprofit. Meanwhile, we are keeping in close contact to see if they will reach their donor goals in the fall.”