New Profit

Over the course of our partnership with New Profit, the organization greatly diversified its funding sources, increased unrestricted funding, added over 100 new donors, and more than doubled its average gift size.

New Profit
sign post icon
Situation

In partnership with a national network of philanthropists, New Profit provides unrestricted growth capital and strategic expertise to a portfolio of breakthrough social entrepreneurs. In addition to providing direct support to a portfolio of organizations, New Profit strengthens the ecosystem that exists around social entrepreneurs to help them thrive and achieve greater impact.

In anticipation of its 20th anniversary, New Profit launched a $250 million campaign. In addition to celebrating New Profit’s impact over the last two decades and charting its leadership vision, the campaign put the first focus on establishing a fund for nonprofits led by proximate leaders.

Puzzle icon
Solution

Orr Group was retained to conduct an assessment and develop a strategic roadmap to guide New Profit’s leadership as it embarked on the campaign. As part of this work, we identified and qualified over 250 prospects, with a potential gift value of more than twice the campaign goal. We designed the campaign’s leadership structure, roles and responsibilities, developed strategies for lead gift solicitation, and provided counsel on staff structure and internal processes for managing the campaign. Following on from that work, we engaged in actively preparing for the campaign by identifying and prioritizing prospects, recruiting top volunteer leadership, refining the case for support, and assembling leadership and major gift prospects.

medal icon
Impact

As part of this work, we identified and qualified over 250 prospects, with a potential gift value of more than twice the campaign goal. We designed the campaign’s leadership structure, roles and responsibilities, developed strategies for lead gift solicitation, and provided counsel on staff structure and internal processes for managing the campaign. As a result of our partnership, the following milestones were achieved over the course of our engagement:

  • Funding diversified by donor type and geography, and unrestricted funding has increased from 17% to 57% of total donations
  • Of the 137 donations, 28 were first-time gifts
  • The average gift size more than doubled
  • Number of gifts greater than $1 million increased from 3 to 11 year over-year, and
  • Total funds raised was 93% greater than the year prior.

In addition to our campaign work, we also partnered with New Profit to design and lead the organization’s “Capitalizing Diverse Leaders and Organizations” (CDLAO) fund. Following a comprehensive review of the current state of diverse leadership and capital supply in the social sector, New Profit identified the areas in which it could leverage its resources to catalyze a marketplace solution to capitalize and support diverse leaders. To operationalize this effort, we partnered with New Profit to design a strategy to raise $50M to support its CDLAO work. The strategy depended on securing 19 gifts over $5M and a total of 56 gifts over $1M.