Services — Brighter Philanthropy

Jen Stirling sits at a desk on a zoom call discussing campaign fundraising

Elevate your fundraising expectations

Trust me to bring the guidance, coaching, benchmarking, data, and strategy your projects need

When you work with me, you can expect our plan to be highly personalized to your needs. I intentionally take on only a small number of clients which means I’m attentive, responsive, and on top of every detail. We’ll have fun accomplishing your mission as a team.

Whether the journey is smooth or requires some tricky maneuvers, let’s navigate together.

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“Jen isn’t afraid to consider alternative ways to get to the end goal. We implemented the innovative ideas we developed with Jen and now we’re seeing the growth in results.”

-Doug Hupke, Associate Vice President, Alumni and Community Engagement, San José State University

What type of support do you need?

My services are always customized to client needs and primarily focused on these three areas:

Campaign Planning

Lacking the campaign planning experience in-house to run a campaign?

Are you worried you won’t be able to raise the money to meet goals and leadership’s expectations?
Is your staff struggling to manage the million tasks required to plan and run a campaign efficiently?

My solutions are highly customized to each unique institution and are never cookie-cutter! I’ll design a plan that helps you achieve your financial potential.

I’ll partner with you on these typical campaign planning priorities:
- Conducting a feasibility study to determine if campaign goals are within reach and whether or not the project is compelling to major stakeholders
- Outlining a strong strategic plan and priorities while aligning them with key stakeholder
- Planning out your gift tables and donor pyramids
- Launching the campaign publicly with events and marketing
- Developing strategies for securing gifts to campaign priorities
- Closing and celebrating the campaign and donors

Development Org Assessments and Staff Coaching

Wondering about how your fundraising operations are performing and what it would take to optimize?

Sensing that you’re not raising as much money as you “should be”?
Noticing gaps in experience and training where your staff could use support?

Getting an outside audit, guidance, and customized staff coaching from an expert can ensure you’re working smarter, not harder.

I’ll create recommendations and a step-by-step path built around your unique organization’s strengths, opportunities, and donors as well as current trends in philanthropy and benchmarking against peer and aspirational institutions.

From there, I’ll help you implement practices and oversee adopted strategies to ensure you’re always on track.

Understanding the best path forward and empowering your team can instill confidence and help you meet your goals (both long and short-term).

A typical development assessment includes:
- Interviewing the internal team and key stakeholders on what working, what’s not, and what they wish they could accomplish
- Reviewing the data sets related to current and historical giving, donor engagement, and general constituent engagement
- Analyzing your processes and programs through the lens of my experience in higher education, as well as industry benchmarking

Board Development

Looking to build or re-engage your board?

Volunteer boards are notoriously hard to recruit and manage; the trick is to truly engage and inspire board members to joyfully invest their time, talent, and treasure and advocate for your institution.

Through retreats and other board development activities, I’ll re-energize the group, reconnecting them with their “why” so that they’re motivated to advocate and drive philanthropic support fundraise with joy and authenticity—diligently working to support fundraising activities, and deepen donor relationships.

Bringing in outside ideas, energy, and support can help pivot a disengaged board to one that is engaged, diverse, philanthropic, and happy (which benefits everyone).

I’ll partner with you on these typical board development priorities:

- Developing a board recruitment plan
- Making the fundraising process friendlier, leveraging specific strengths and skill sets to connect board members with meaningful tasks that are the best fit for their skill sets and interests
- Planning and leading activities during meetings or retreats to engage the board, including feedback sessions, campaign planning, working in-action meetings, etc.
- Setting up a regular cadence of engagements with board members such as newsletters, peer list reviews, campus events, subcommittees and task forces, hosting dinners, student mentorships, and writing thank-you notes to donors.