Guide Dogs for
the Blind

Situation

Guide Dogs for the Blind has created partnerships between people, dogs, and communities for over 75 years. Guide Dogs prepares highly qualified guide dogs to serve and empower individuals who are blind or have low vision throughout the U.S. and Canada. Guide Dogs is the largest guide dog school in the country, and all services for its clients are provided free of charge. Guide Dogs envisions a world with greater inclusion, opportunity, and independence by optimizing the unique capabilities of people and dogs.

Solution

Guide Dogs is embarking on an aggressive ten-year strategic plan to increase its fundraising by 400%. Guide Dogs partnered with Orr Group to build a fundraising strategy to increase their annual fundraising exponentially, with a focus on expanding the donor pool and enhancing cultivation and stewardship efforts. Our work resulted in a final report that focuses on four key areas:

• Creating a lead management process and major gift process that would allow GDB to create and maintain relationships with over 100,000 annual supporters.
• Improving and enhancing fundraising processes, by increasing capacity  in both head count and knowledge experience base.
• Articulating a vision that attracts transformational donors and will result in larger and more frequent gifts.
• Developing a unified and collaborative approach to marketing and fundraising.

Impact

To help address some of these immediate areas of opportunities, Orr Group stepped in to serve as Interim Chief Philanthropy Officer. Since taking on this role,year over year revenue has increased by 153%, we’ve achieved a 33% increase in contributed revenue from FY21 to FY22, and GDB experienced a 35% increase from FY20 to FY21 in contributed revenue.