After completing past successful fundraising campaigns to extend Memorial Park’s features and amenities, Memorial Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was ready to pursue long-term sustainability. By investing in revenue-generating positions and a staff growth plan, the Conservancy was poised to increase philanthropic capacity for the next phase of the Park’s master plan.
In preparation for its next campaign, the Conservancy wanted to ensure its fundraising operation and programs were well-positioned for success. The leadership team needed a roadmap to provide a strategic way forward and to establish the campaign milestones that would create momentum, show progress, and increase their fundraising capacity and operational efficiencies. The Conservancy was also ready to name its next comprehensive campaign and create its visual identity.
Outside counsel provided the campaign’s critical building blocks: an internal assessment that included a program review, a donor sentiment and engagement survey, and capacity analysis; campaign planning; major gifts training; naming opportunities guidelines; endowment and gift acceptance policies; and implementation strategies for operational effectiveness and volunteer engagement. In addition, facilitated ideation sessions and an online preferences survey helped generate a well-received campaign theme and logo. From there, copy and design for the case statement and a project case overview were created, thereby establishing the campaign’s look and feel.
“Collaborating with BWF meant that MPC was quickly able to tap into a team of fundraising strategists and practitioners, which broadened our scope of possibility, deepened our understanding of what our donor data was telling us, and helped us craft a roadmap for our next campaign. We have been successful because BWF listened to MPC, asked questions, strove to understand our organization’s needs and opportunities, and—maybe most importantly—was willing to pivot with us as we grew and learned.”Holli ClementsVice President of Engagement • Memorial Park Conservancy
Memorial Park Conservancy found that BWF’s deep bench on data-informed strategy and operations helped the team build out its development operations team, drawing from both best-practice knowledge and proven experience and knowledge of Houston’s unique philanthropic landscape.
To date, Memorial Park Conservancy has raised $45M toward the $100M campaign goal.
