Fundraising & Strategy

In addition to my photography and writing, I also work as a part-time consultant helping nonprofit organizations to fundraise and/or plan strategies regarding critical grassroots issues.

As a fundraising consultant, I can assist in organizing, strategizing, and energizing your nonprofit fundraising efforts in the following manner:

Establish a capital campaign plan:
- Help your nonprofit organization assemble and refine compelling campaign materials and imagery
- Help you create a timeline for a Capital Campaign
- Help you structure your campaign with your volunteers
- Help you create necessary Campaign committees/task forces:
  - Solicitation (broken up into several ranges of giving):
    - Leadership & Major Donor, etc.
    - Advance Gifts (small committee to solicit gifts from members of Campaign)
  - Donor tracking (donor tracking computer program, data input, thank you letters, pledge forms, etc.)
  - Grants & Foundations
  - Events/outreach (donor cultivation/grassroots)
  - Communications
  - A Campaign team or “Cabinet” (to oversee and keep your campaign’s momentum going)
Help you identify potential donors
Run training sessions for major donor asks (“How to ask for those really big donations”)
Assist with making “ asks” with members of your solicitation committees
Help approach private foundations and public agencies for grants
Assist in launching a public phase of your Capital Campaign by:
- helping you create a highly visible kick-off event
- helping you generate ongoing publicity about the effort (another Bluffs-like story?)
- helping you to expand your donor “cultivation” through events and other methods
help to keep your campaign on task and following our established timeline
help you to reach your campaign goal and celebrating our success!

My Background:

I have over 20 years of political strategizing and grassroots organizing experience on a variety of local Carpinteria and Santa Barbara County land use issues including the City of Carpinteria’s Visioning 2020 process, the Land Use and Growth Management Team of which I was co-chair, and the longstanding effort to save the Carpinteria Bluffs from development.

As President of Citizens for the Carpinteria Bluffs, I spearheaded the $3.95 million community-wide effort to acquire the Carpinteria Bluffs as open space, in partnership with the Land Trust of Santa Barbara County, and gift the property to the City. Faced with having to raise a seemingly impossible $35,000 a day for 4 months, we reached our initial goal by our December 31, 1998 deadline. By April of 2000, we had also raised our additional, promised $500,000 endowment fund to help maintain the bluffs property as a nature preserve and playing fields. Total raised: $4.66 million.

As Chair of the “Home of Our Own” Site Campaign for the Santa Barbara Middle School (SBMS), a private 6th through9th grade middle school, I headed up a successful capital campaign in 2003 and 2004 that reached its goal of raising $2.2 million in gifts and pledges. I also served as President of the Board of Trustees of SBMS.

Subsequent to our local success with saving and protecting the Carpinteria Bluffs, a number of grassroots organizations and causes from around the county and the state have contacted me to help them energize their own efforts and “brainstorm” fundraising strategies. These causes have included preservation efforts in Palos Verdes, Malibu, Ventura, Monrovia, Claremont, Sacramento, Grass Valley, Santa Barbara (Ellwood Shores, San Marcos Foothills), Goleta (Old Town), and the Gaviota Coast. In the fall of 2006, I managed the successful political campaign that culminated with the election of progressive activist Al Clark to Carpinteria City Council.

I am currently President of Friends of VADA, the 501 [c] [3] nonprofit with the mission of supporting the Visual Arts and Design Academy at Santa Barbara High School. We conduct an annual fund campaign each year with a goal of $81,000, our portion of the matching funds needed to meet State funding requirements for this California State Partnership Academy program.

My strengths:

My strengths are communication (public speaking, writing, photography), working with others (team building), strategizing ("What is really going to work here?" and "What is going to really resonate with folks, get their attention?"), energizing (igniting the fires of a campaign and keeping those fires burning), and logistics (prioritizing under pressure the most critical tasks of a campaign).

Contact Ted Rhodes for more information: