2012: Annual Campaign
The Junior League of Tampa’s annual campaign makes up about 55% of it annual fundraising effort, so a recession-induced drop of nearly $90,000 had an impact.
The challenging circumstances forced the League to revitalize its fundraising efforts with several new goals:
- To increase the amount of corporate donations to $50,000
- To maintain 100% participation of the 2009-2010 donors
- To raise participation by Active members to 50%
- To achieve 100% participation of the League’s executive committee and board of directors
To reach its goals, the League took several key steps:
- Training the people who actually ask for the money in the skill of solicitation
- Linking to amount of a funding request with a tangible goal in the community
- Supporting the campaign outreach team by upgrading the infrastructure, donation process and record-keeping system.
- Cultivating corporate donors and publicly acknowledging their support
- Making sure that major individual donors received extra benefits such as tickets to the holiday gift market and a new patron’s party
- Emphasizing the act of giving, rather than simply the size of the donation
Outcomes of the revitalization effort included total giving in 2010-2011 of $204,000…$3,000 more than it had been in 2007-2008, before the recession hit.
Active participation was just over 64%, up 22% from the previous year. All 52 board members donated, and a third of the 32 committees achieved 100% member participation.
There were also nearly 600 donors, both members and business, up from 540 in the year before and up from 231 in the 2007-2008 year.