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FUNDRAISING

Ostara's fundraising consultants are your collaborators and strategic partners.

With a deep understanding of the intricacies of the philanthropic landscape, and consultants with a wide array of experience across sectors, we tailor our services to address the unique needs of each client, and partner with you to assess your development program, build capacity, strengthen your culture of philanthropy, and develop internal infrastructure needed to fundraise effectively.

As fundraising consultants, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you and your staff, providing insight and solutions that align with your resources, priorities, and vision working alongside you and your team to elevate your impact and realize your organizational goals.

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Development Assessment - review of current plan, strategies, development operations and communications, and a full set of recommendations

Strategic Data Services - focus on fundraising systems, data management, dashboards & custom analytics

Grant Strategy, Research and Writing - grant program development, institutional funder research, and expert grant writing

Fundraising Planning - strategic and strengths-based planning for growing the fund development program

Fundraising Training, Workshops & 1:1 Coaching - for executive directors, development staff, or board members

Special Projects - digital campaigns, annual fund appeals, development hiring, events other specialties

Case Development - compelling "case for support" messaging framework and refinement

Major Gift Program - strategy, planning, real-time prospect strategy & coaching

Planned Giving - expert strategy for individual gift planning and legacy program development

Wealth Screening & Individual Donor Research - Batch screenings and targeted research using industry-leading technology

Interim Staffing & Hiring Process Facilitation - skilled leadership to navigate through vacancies, and assistance scoping the position, recruiting and screening candidates.

Case Studies

Edmonds Food Bank

The Edmonds Food Bank is dedicated to alleviating food insecurity in the Edmonds community by providing food assistance through their mobile food distributions, home delivery and online order programs. In 2022, the Edmonds Food Bank engaged Ostara to provide capital campaign feasibility and planning services to assist with their plan to construct a new facility to meet the growing need for food assistance.

During the feasibility assessment, it was determined that the food bank needed to build out their fundraising program infrastructure prior to embarking on a capital campaign and in 2023, Ostara was invited back to engage in an interim development leadership role to shape the food bank’s fundraising program and strategy.

After conducting a development assessment, Ostara determined that we needed to lead and support the food bank through several areas of direct fundraising work to lay the foundation for future program and campaign success. Ostara partnered with the food bank to develop the fundraising program and program infrastructure, provided leadership and ground support for creating and implementing the fund development plan and managed donor cultivation and solicitation activities.

Throughout our time serving as interim program leadership, Ostara successfully created and launched a fully functional development program with the SOPs and tools necessary to set the incoming team up for success. Ostara led the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding processes for the newly created Marketing and Communications Manager, Director of Development, and Individual Giving Manager positions. Ostara managed the strategy, content creation, and the execution for multiple fundraising campaigns as well as the food bank’s first annual impact report.

Washington Family Engagement

Washington Family Engagement (WAFE) is a nonprofit dedicated to teaching parents and children of all ages how to become leaders in their schools and communities. When WAFE approached Ostara, the organization was almost entirely volunteer-run, with one full-time paid employee and very little time to dedicate to fundraising. While their community greatly needed more of their impactful services, they did not know where or how to start raising new funds.

In December 2018, Ostara analyzed WAFE’s list of grant prospects and then conducted a thorough search to expand the list and prioritize those that were well-aligned with WAFE’s work. Afterward, we created an action-oriented and realistic grant work plan for the year that was linked to concrete revenue targets.

Over the next year, Ostara managed grants according to the work plan and helped the WAFE team refine their language and strategy along the way. As they sought grants, they worked together to build an organizational budget for the board to approve, design new projects, and approach new funders. Through this process, they identified ways to clearly communicate WAFE’s programs and facilitate effective relationship-building with funders.

This work led to strong fundraising results. Between 2018 and 2019, WAFE more than tripled their grant revenue, exceeded their revenue target, and secured five new funders. With this growth, WAFE was able to begin paying its formerly-volunteer Executive Director for the first time, moved into its first office space, and began to think about programmatic growth goals for the next several years. More importantly, they now have a sustainable fundraising mechanism in place to fuel that growth.

West Seattle Helpline

Established in 1989, West Seattle Helpline’s (WSH’s) mission is to stop homelessness before it starts by supporting our neighbors who are facing an emergency or unexpected hardship.

In 2016, West Seattle Helpline (WSH) came to Ostara with a need to better define their fundraising strategy through grants. Ostara began work to identify grant prospects, create a tailored grant strategy, and compose compelling narratives that aligned with the organization’s mission, programs, and staff capacity.

From 2016 to 2019, West Seattle Helpline increased their number of secured grants by 500%. With the help of this additional funding, WSH was able to increase their staff from 0.75 to 3.5 full-time employees, double their pool of volunteers, and most importantly, help prevent homelessness for over 1,000 additional people and children each year.

In early 2019, Ostara facilitated conversations between West Seattle Helpline and their long-time partner West Seattle Food Bank; the two organizations came together to actively explore how to better utilize resources and programs to best serve their shared community. Through this process they identified a significant service crossover, a strong community focus, and a desire to increase capacity, leading to the decision to merge the two organizations.

In 2020, Ostara continues to shepherd the success of WSH’s grant program by solidifying a narrative and grant strategy that encompasses both organization’s histories, newly-merged mission, and ongoing programs.

City Year Seattle-King County

City Year Seattle/King County (City Year) deploys young adult AmeriCorps members into systemically under-resourced urban public schools in Seattle to serve as tutors, mentors, and role models and help students develop the skills to graduate from high school on-time and on-track toward promising colleges and careers.

In 2015, City Year made plans to expand the organization’s impact into Seattle Public Schools. Anticipating this growth, City Year sought grants support from Ostara to help identify new potential prospects, draft foundation grants and grant reports, and help manage relationships with funders.

Through this work, Ostara helped City Year grow their grants portfolio by 70% from 2015 to 2019. Additionally, City Year attracted over a dozen new funders during this time by implementing strategic relationship-building tactics with key funders.

As a result of the strong financial base and deep partnerships with funders, City Year is taking the unprecedented step of expanding their program from serving only 3rd – 8th graders to also serving high schools by 2021. Ostara is incredibly proud of the impact that City Year has achieved.

Equity in Education Coalition

The Equity in Education Coalition (EEC) is Washington’s only civil rights organization that is focused on building a revolution in education so that a child’s race and zip code are not the predicating factors in defining their success.

When EEC contacted Ostara, the organization was expanding its development operations to include contributed income and earned revenue. The organization needed help articulating its strategic advantage and business model in order to craft communications and strategy for fundraising. To help EEC, Ostara placed a consulting team to help improve their development communications and fundraising strategy in grants.

To start, Ostara facilitated sessions with Executive Director Sharonne Navas and other key staff members to create EEC’s Theory of Change and Case for Support. This helped create organizational consensus and narrative to fuel fundraising efforts.

Prior to working with Ostara, EEC had experienced success with a few large grants and long-term funders. However, EEC had not completed a comprehensive research project and the organization needed support organizing, prioritizing, and strategizing about grant funders. To help them in this area, Bailey Disher completed in-depth research on existing and new prospects, provided recommendations about how to prioritize prospects and engage funders thoughtfully, and organized an 18-month grant timeline with key steps for grant cultivation, execution, and stewardship.

As a result of our multi-leveled work, EEC staff was equipped with tangible tools to build a grants program, more clarity in telling the organization’s story, and a greater feeling of support in their work.

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