How a Food Bank and Private School Thrived During the Economic Slump

The Kansas City Rescue Mission, a nonprofit serving some of the area’s neediest residents, and St. Paul’s School, an elite private institution in New Hampshire, share some unusual good fortune: Their fundraising thrived through the recession. Now, both groups are trying to keep the streak going.

The organizations persevered by being bold—pressing ahead with expansion plans despite the economic downturn, and carefully explaining their reasons to donors.

St. Paul’s launched a seven-year, $175-million capital campaign in July 2008, just as the U.S. economy was tumbling. But with strong board leadership and plenty of solid pledges in hand and on the horizon, the school persevered, says Bill Kissick, director of alumni and development. The school met its goal this year, one year earlier than expected.

The biggest prize along the way, Mr. Kissick says, was the cost savings realized on construction of its capital projects. The original price tag on the school’s new math and sciences building, for example, was $42-million, but it came in $3-million under budget because steel prices dropped during the recession, among other factors.

“We feel like we got a discount and now we are raising even more money around it,” Mr. Kissick says of the new building and the school’s increased emphasis on science and math.

St. Paul’s saw a 25-percent increase last year in the number of student applicants listing science or math as their top interest, and school fundraisers have been reaching out to potential donors with a bent toward those fields of study.

“This is something we can talk about with donors who might want to give more now because of what we are doing in those subjects or to donors who have never given before but who like science and now see this great, new building and our renewed commitment,” Mr. Kissick says.

The Kansas City Rescue Mission has been reaching out to new types of donors, too, making appeals centered on the group’s new women’s shelter, which was built with money raised in the middle of the recession. The group did not have a dedicated facility for women before last summer, when the $1.8-million purchase and renovation of the building was completed.

“We know there are donors who have a specific interest in supporting the needs of women,” says Juliana Larocco, chief development officer, “and now we have a way to connect with them directly.”

As an example, she says the organization has developed a relationship with the Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City, which gave $25,000 toward the building.

The rescue mission was also introduced to a number of grant makers that contributed to the group for the first time—or made bigger donations—during the recession.

“We had a lot of sympathy and attention, especially starting a capital campaign in the middle of a bad economy,” Ms. Larocco says. “Foundations that were heavy in the arts or would normally be giving to cultural institutions or other things were giving to food and shelter needs at the time, so we had a 100-percent success rate almost with grant writing.”

Now that foundations have been returning to prerecession patterns, Ms. Larocco says, her group has been stepping up its appeals to individual donors. One area in which the group is consistently finding success, she says, is social media.

An email blast to 1,000 people last month requesting $5,800 to pay for an alarm system in the new women’s center attracted the full amount from a single donor in a day. An appeal on Facebook for $1,700 to buy pillows and mattresses quickly raised about $4,000.

“We just keep putting our name and our needs out there, and with a loyal donor base and cultivating new supporters all the time, we know we can continue our momentum,” Ms. Larocco says.