Strategy & Assessment
Know where you stand. Development assessments, fundraising plans, case for support, donor surveys, and board engagement.
FIRST, AN HONEST PICTURE.
Most fundraising plans are built on what an organization hopes is true rather than what its data says. Before you set a goal, you need an honest picture of where you stand.
Which donors are quietly lapsing. Which campaigns lose money once staff time is counted. Which relationships are being left on the table. That’s where we start — and then we build the plan and the story that follow from it.
the work we do
Development Assessment
An independent look at your entire fundraising program — donor database, campaign performance, financial health. You finish with a prioritized roadmap, not a report that sits in a drawer.
Development Plan
The 12-month roadmap itself: goals and objectives, target audiences, strategies, timeline and milestones, budget, communications and stewardship plans, and who owns what. Built so your team can run it after we leave.
Case for Support
The narrative that tells donors what you’ll accomplish with their money and why now. We facilitate a vision session with your stakeholders, then write the two-to-four page document your appeals, proposals, event scripts, and major-gift conversations all draw from.
Board Engagement Plans
Donor Surveys & Analysis
Your donors will tell you why they give and why they stop, if you ask properly. We design and field the survey, then turn the results into changes you can actually make.
Most board members want to help with fundraising and don’t know how. We give each one a defined, achievable role — so the board becomes an asset rather than a recurring agenda item.
That’s our side of it. Here’s a client’s.
“As a startup nonprofit without full time staff, we have benefited from Trilogy Philanthropic as their team is great to work with, timely and strategic in their approach to the fundraising of smaller nonprofits and in particular how to raise funds via direct mail. They have been a key part of reaching out to current donors and reaching new ones.”
— Dann Mead Smith, Co-Founder and Co-Leader, Project 42HOW THIS WORKS.
Engagement shape
A full assessment runs four to six weeks; a standalone plan or case for support is shorter. Your part is a kickoff session, a handful of interviews, and one working session at the end. You keep the written assessment, the 12-month plan, and the underlying analysis — and you can run it yourself from there. Plenty of clients do.
Who this is for
We work with policy and advocacy organizations — state think tanks, legal advocacy funds, and issue campaigns — and with nonprofits across education, the arts, and human services. This page is for organizations heading into a campaign, onboarding new development leadership, or aware that revenue has plateaued without knowing why. One-person shop or full department, both work.
Let’s talk.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. Tell us what your team is working toward, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right help — and what we’d do first.