JEVS Human Services: Maximizing Staffing Assignments
By Michelle Eisenberg, Consultant
April 2011

Client Challenge
A well-established, multi-faceted social service organization, JEVS Human Services generates its revenue mainly from public agency contracts and private-pay fees. The organization’s leadership realized the potential to grow private philanthropic support following a successful capital campaign to build a new technical training center – but they also saw an increasingly urgent need for more private support to replace diminishing government funding streams.

Schultz & Williams senior consultants were engaged to fill a vacancy as the organization searched for a new leader for what was still a fledgling development effort. JEVS needed a clearer road map to guide them in elevating their fundraising program, and they did not want to lose ground with cultivated prospects in the interim.

Schultz & Williams Strategy
Acting as senior development leadership, S&W consultants put systems and procedures in place to enhance major prospect management efforts, supporting both the Board and CEO with their cultivation and solicitation work. Our team members provided counsel on prospect strategies and helped identify new potential sources of funding.

To help articulate the organization’s case for support, S&W consultants engaged in conversations with staff across the organization so we could understand funding needs and recommend how to “package” them for donors. The JEVS Board prioritized and approved a list of strategic funding priorities that spanned critical areas of the organization’s programming.

As our team assisted in the search for a new Chief Development Officer, we nurtured the younger staff in the department and helped them understand the broader vision for how the development effort was to grow.

Results
JEVS hired a new Chief Development Officer who was able to hit the ground running with a cultivated constituency; a clear and compelling case for support; and a CEO, Board and staff well-primed and motivated to succeed in fundraising. Instead of losing ground during the vacancy, the department was able to use the interim period, under Schultz & Williams’ guidance, to engage in critical planning activities.

Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia; providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services.