Capacity-Building Grants: Learn to Be a Self-Sustaining Nonprofit, Part 2
One of the reasons for that, says Tom Gagen, CEO of Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, is that “people had a misunderstanding of what they did when you talk about community services versus a food bank.”
So the first thing Sutter and its capacity-building partner, 3fold Communications — a nonprofit marketing agency — did with River City Community Services was change its name to River City Food Bank to make it clear to community just what the organization does. From there, 3fold and RCFB mapped out a basic marketing plan, which included:
- a website redesign;
- what grants to go after;
- what appeals to make;
- what programs to grow and how to grow them.
RCFB also expanded its major fundraiser, Empty Bowls, which 3fold helped maximize into a corporate-sponsor cultivation event. Empty Bowls had been bringing in around $56,000 annually for the food bank and relied heavily on volunteers. With the help of 3fold, that total increased to $89,000 the following year and more than $100,000 the year after that, Thomas says.
