In my tenure as the Executive Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine we faced two challenges common to small non-profits: stagnant membership and fundraising not meeting targets. I brought Ship Bright on to see if he could help.
Ship took a close look at our promotional materials and fundraising campaigns. He interviewed key staff and board members. After just one day in our office Ship recommended that we completely revamp our annual appeal, and he guided our staff through the process to do just that.
Impressed, my board asked Ship for more help with our organizational structure and fundraising activities. Ship identified many weaknesses—among them that I needed to be more proactive in our fundraising efforts--and he offered advice to help me be more persuasive with our major donors. He recommended that we combine our communications and development teams into one, headed by a new Mission Advancement Director. At our request Ship then conducted a successful search for the new position. With Ship’s help we reorganized our staff, improved our promotional materials, revamped our member appeals, and our numbers improved.
I hired Ship to help with our development activities, but in the process, he offered counsel on a wide range of topics, including how to be more effective with my board. For our board members Ship helped clarify the roles of board members vs. staff and provided reassurance that the issues we faced were not unique to our organization. I can’t recommend Ship Bright and NGO Solutions highly enough.
John Williams
Former Executive Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine