An Interview With Moira Mulroney, Director of Development and Communications, the Support Center for Child Advocates

As the philanthropy trends change and monies are less available from corporate and foundation sources, we hope to strengthen our individual giving program by increasing major gifts and planned gifts. To date, we have not launched a formal major-gifts program so I consider that to be our area of weakness and an area of potential growth.

FS: How do you engage donors and other supporters and potential supporters in ways other than purely fundraising efforts?
MM: Child Advocates is the nation's oldest and largest pro bono legal and social services agency serving abused and neglected children. We recruit and train hundreds of attorneys a year, assigning more than 500 volunteer attorneys to represent our child clients. We believe in "whole child" representation, teaming volunteer attorneys with staff social workers and consulting lawyers to provide all needed legal and social services with the goal to secure a permanent and nurturing environment for each child. There is no better way to engage our supporters than to involve them directly in our work.