LAPA’s Development Office Service fills your staffing gaps so that you don’t lose fundraising momentum. LAPA provides the continuity that you need to stabilize your development program.
We can either outpost an interim Development Officer, or we can manage your entire development program long-term.
Our Big Idea
Outsourcing your development office with LAPA will maintain your fundraising momentum. We can establish or refine your fundraising systems, elevate your development team, and orient your development program toward the most lucrative opportunities.
Through our services, we can support and/or build your current team, supervise them, and inspire them to reach their highest levels of performance.
Even the most competent staff needs high-level support and supervision to coordinate their multiple areas of responsibility.
By outsourcing your development office to LAPA, we can provide you with built-in systems and processes that are proven to raise revenue, high-level expertise from senior fundraisers, and a comprehensive approach to your fundraising program.
LAPA’s back-office fundraising services cost less than an in-house hire and provide a significantly higher return on investment.
Fundraising staff turnover is high for many reasons. One main cause is that many nonprofits do not adequately fund the development function. As a result, seasoned fundraisers might be leery of joining your team. Having the right development plan and established donor processing structures, for example, can help you retain your fundraising staff.
That’s where we can help you.
The fact is that the average term of a director of development is only 18 months.
By comparison, the average LAPA client engages us for 7.5 years—and many work with us for more than a decade.
LAPA’s Development Office Leadership and Outsourced Fundraising Services can fill your staffing gaps (in the short- or long-term) or add to your fundraising capacity. Otherwise, you may risk losing momentum with donor or funder engagement. We provide the continuity you need to stabilize your development program.
Sample Scope Of Service
Coaching and training
LAPA provides fundraising advancement coaching that will help your staff grow into the leaders they were meant to be. With coaching, your staff will be able to create and execute advanced fundraising strategies, which raise more revenue.
Maintaining and Growing Your Annual Fund
LAPA creates a rollout strategy for donor cultivation and solicitation based on each donor’s capacity to give, as well as their affinity to your cause. After segmenting your donors properly, LAPA integrates “moves management,” whereby we ask for increased support. Plus, we have automation techniques that allow you to cultivate more donors while saving your personal time for higher-touch major donors.
Advanced Prospect Research
LAPA’s prospect research is the best in the industry. We don’t just give you back data. As fundraisers and data experts, we connect the insights within your data and use them to deepen your fundraising strategy and implementation processes. Then we connect that strategy to your organizational growth, raise more revenue, and elevate the profile of your nonprofit. We regularly identify thousands of new value-aligned donors for our clients and find hundreds of major donors hidden within their annual funds.
Major Gift Fundraising
Having learned more about your major donors through our in-depth research, we also document their networks and append the resulting “relationship maps” to each respective donor record in your donor database.
We also create donor action plans for each top prospect. LAPA then implements a nuanced strategy to cultivate and solicit your major donors. We can also outsource a major gift officer to manage the cultivation and solicitation.
Technical and Project Support
The LAPA Team extends beyond the fundraising work. You are supported by professional copyeditors and videographers, award-winning graphic designers, and one of the best direct mail teams and print/mail management houses if needed.
Search Services
Whether you’re beginning to craft a position description or you’re ready to start the search, our goal is to understand your strategic imperatives and develop the strongest pool of candidates.
We strive to identify candidates who bring broad backgrounds and real experience. Our ethical obligation as your fundraising counsel is to always function in your best interests. This means we will be the first to tell you when it’s the right time for an in-house hire.