Two nonprofits were in discussions for many years about collaborating on a capital project without concrete results. Sage Resource Strategies provided project management, meeting facilitation, comparables research, and writing services to produce clarity about the project, codified in a written business and financial plan to share with potential donors and other stakeholders. The organizations now have a shared understanding of what they want to accomplish, how it might look, and what resources will be necessary to make it happen.
A private, nonprofit early childhood center, faced with decreasing net income despite steady enrollment, was considering changing its tuition structure. Sage Resource Strategies created a financial model that incorporated the various moving parts: tuition levels based on age, part- and full-time enrollment options, and discounts and fees determined on a variety of bases. The school administration was able to see the impact that alternative tuition, discount, and fee structures would have on revenue for specified levels of enrollment. The model also helped manage the largest expense in the center by informing the staffing levels required given the number of children enrolled by time of day and day of week.
A small nonprofit sought to raise the bar on its fundraising activities, but lacked manpower, a donor management system, and other resources. Sage Resource Strategies compiled and cleaned data from disparate systems to build a basic donor database, then analyzed the data to generate key reports such as donor giving history and results of fundraising campaigns. Now solicitors use information about each donor’s past gifts, including what prompted each gift, when preparing for future asks. The organization now runs a targeted annual appeal, customized based on donors’ giving history and membership status.
A national membership organization was overwhelmed with planning its biennial conference. Working closely with the lead conference planner, Sage Resource Strategies developed two tracks of the conference – identifying speakers, designing sessions, creating the flow of the day, and negotiating speaker compensation. As a result, the special tracks had enhanced content and buy-in from the speakers and the overall field, and the conference staff was able to meet conference-planning deadlines and exceed registration targets.
An international service-delivery nonprofit maintained multiple database systems to support different departments and programs. Each system tracked different information for overlapping constituents, leading to confusion and frustration both for staff and clients. Sage Resource Strategies provided project management and technical support for a phased migration into a centralized, customizable customer relationship management (CRM) system. Working closely with a CRM implementation provider and an internal team of data champions, Sage Resource Strategies:
- articulated the needs for each department,
- informed the design of the new database structure and user interface,
- contributed to the end user training plan and materials,
- advised on policies and procedures for the new system, and
- extracted and prepared the data from the legacy systems to be imported into the new system, documenting each decision.
The organization now has cleaner, more reliable data, shared securely and in real time across the migrated departments.