Leveraging the Board
Networking and Advocacy to Drive Fund Development s
The Tender Bridge is a 20-year old, volunteer-led non-profit that engages at-risk youth through sports. Year-round 1:1 mentoring relationships help them avoid a life of drugs and crime, and increase their probability of becoming happy productive citizens.
The Tender Bridge is a 20-year old, volunteer-led non-profit that engages at-risk youth through sports. Year-round 1:1 mentoring relationships help them avoid a life of drugs and crime, and increase their probability of becoming happy productive citizens.
The Tender Bridge aims to build a path of positive self-development for young people that enables them to attain new competencies, nurture their curiosity, and teach personal responsibility, as well as build a community bridge that crosses racial and economic divides. Properly screened and trained volunteers provide the logistical support and guidance children need to be successful in our recreational programs.
Through The Tender Bridge, children are connected with sports including hockey, lacrosse, mountain biking and sailing. Recruitment is done at a grassroots level as the children see a team practicing, a friend tells them about the program, or when one of our volunteers encounters them on the streets when picking up an existing Tender Bridge child for a practice or game.
With a small budget and a low cost per participant ratio, The Tender Bridge has supported more than 700 youth and has provided multi-year support for 200. More than 50 of the youth that have been part of The Tender Bridge have made it to adulthood with a job and a bank account.
Like many non-profits, especially small organizations, The Tender Bridge struggled to develop diversified funding strategies that could help build capacity to grow. With a fairly new – and young – board, and no paid staff, the organization did not have any expertise to develop a fundraising strategy. Recognizing the need for funding to support a future paid staff with the retirement of its founding director, the board sought external support to train the board on fundraising best practices, and develop a fund development strategy.
Our Services
- Through several facilitated training sessions we helped the board learn how to leverage their personal network to build awareness for the organization and identify opportunities for support through grants, sponsorships and individual donations.
- Working with the Board Chair, we helped him stand-up formal committees to drive programming and fund development
- To help the board remain focused and build momentum in their outreach initiatives, as well as manage subsequent follow-ups and next steps, we developed an initial action plan and prospect tracker
- We helped the Board Chair develop a list of prospects, leveraged our own network to set up initial introductions, and joined the Board Chair and Executive Director for several meetings to provide guidance and support to maximize opportunities
- We created materials for the board to use in initial introductions and requests for funding including talking points, a one-pager overview of the organization, case for support, sponsorship sell sheets, and a sample LOI
- In an effort to leverage the networks of board members and volunteers to improve brand awareness and positioning, we developed an initial marketing and communications strategy to optimize communication tools and provided the board with a social media toolkit
- To prepare the board for independent work without a consultant, we designed a growth strategy playbook that included a step-by-step guide and a timeline, as well as separate fund development and communications strategies
“We worked with Kristi for a series of engagements. She helped us with fundraising strategies and provided marketing and grant writing material. She also used her considerable network to help us get connected with movers and shakers in the world of foundations and granting organizations. She provided some impactful training for our Board members in how to engage others in conversations about our work and our mission.”