New Profit

Challenge

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 2018, New Profit launched a $250 million campaign to coincide with its 20th anniversary. In addition to celebrating New Profit’s impact over the last two decades and charting its leadership vision, the campaign intended to create a strong financial foundation for the organization’s next 20 years.

Solution

To support this effort, 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. 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.

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:

• 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.
• Total funds raised was 93% greater than the year prior.