Services: Non-Profit



Volunteer Leadership/Board of Directors

For any nonprofit organization, volunteer leadership or the board of directors is the foundation of its inner-most circle, an integral aspect of its operations, and performs two primary functions:

  1. Governance – This includes setting policies and procedures, overseeing investments and the budgeting process, and making sure the organization fulfills its mission.
  2. Fundraising – This includes making sure the organization has the necessary resources to fulfill its mission by making meaningful personal contributions as well as soliciting donations from current and prospective donors.

However, the board of directors is only effective if its members are aware of their roles and responsibilities, are properly trained, and receive the necessary support to meet their job description.

AC&A offers a variety of services to help an organization assemble an effective board of directors. Some of these services include:

  • Assessing the effectiveness of current board members and, if necessary, developing strategies to respectfully ask members to step down
  • Developing recruitment strategies and materials to attract new board members
  • Developing trainings and materials for current and new board members to familiarize them with the organization and with their roles and responsibilities
  • Working with individual board members and key staff to identify, cultivate, solicit, and enhance stewardship of new and current donors, including major donors.

Strategic Planning

An effective strategic plan maps out a clear direction for your organization, along with concrete steps to improve mission delivery, constituent relationships, and fundraising efforts. Ultimately, such a strategy inspires and informs the executive team, empowers staff members, and engages external stakeholders, including board members, volunteers, donors, and more.

AC&A's methodology will help your organization capture its long- and short-term goals as well as develop clear activities, standards, resource requirements, and timetables to ensure optimal operations and produce lasting results.

Fundraising

Charitable giving has been the basis on which many successful organizations have been founded. At AC&A, we focus on quickly and efficiently delivering high–impact, results-driven services aimed at immediately achieving our client's highest priorities. We do this by integrating the latest practices and approaches into a set of customized services.

A successful development program comprises several crucial elements. While the scope and scale of each element changes according to each organization's needs, the need for these building blocks to be highly effective, efficient, and donor-centered do not change. From designing new ways to attract and retain donors through a sophisticated annual giving campaign, to creating a successful online giving program, AC&A is committed in ensuring the highest return on invest and immediate impacts to our client's bottom line.

Annual Giving
Renewable support, whether mission- or operations-based, can be difficult to grow and sustain, especially during tough economic times. At AC&A, we help foster your organization's annual giving potential with a strategic, systematic approach that focuses on a segmented and data-driven methodology. Our annual giving plans begin with a detailed assessment and analysis of past annual giving approaches and historical performance indicators. We then formulate a set of recommendations that yield higher earnings, maximum return on investment, and increased results and donor participation. AC&A also provides support for your campaigns through the design and production of campaign materials, as well as designing and implementing strategies that incorporate email and social media outlets.

Foundation and Grant Support
Pursuing grant and foundation support can be a burdensome task for many nonprofits and oftentimes having a partner to assist in aligning funding opportunities with relevant foundation and grant sources can provide the crucial missing link to successfully obtaining funding. Our experience in grant writing will assist your staff, leadership, and volunteers in everything from sourcing and researching grant opportunities to preparing grant proposals for submission. We can also offer several assessment and alignment tools to ensure that programs are structured appropriately for grant making institutions.

Special Events Planning and Management
There are many pros and cons to having a special event. One of the challenges of special events is that they are extremely labor intensive. Coordinating a well-planned event requires many hours of staff and volunteer work. Our events are designed to not only celebrate a milestone or bring attention to a particular issue, but to identify potential major donors through corporate sponsors and to attract new individual donors from among those attending the event. AC&A has the capability, talent, and resources to make your special event less of a headache and to generate a greater return on your investment. We partner with our client to assist in developing an event theme , creating marketing materials, securing sponsorships, and coordinating vendors and volunteers among other details to relieve pressure and stress from staff and to ensure a successful event.

Donor Relations and Stewardship
Ongoing donor support depends on maintaining strong relationships with donors. Our donor-centered approach examines the complex give-and-take between individuals and organizations and helps you build stronger relationships with your donors. AC&A can work with your board and staff to assess your current donor relations and stewardship activities and help you create stronger donor-centered programs.