Fundraising year-round pursuit for RIF staff

The Rhode Island Foundation’s endowment exceeds $730 million, but feeding the appetites of philanthropy is a constant exercise in relationship-building that leads to giving – an exercise two recent hires plan to help boost.
On Sept. 29, the foundation hired Michele Berard as senior development officer and Tim Groves as development officer. They round out a team with decades of combined experience that includes James S. Sanzi, vice president of development; Carol Golden, senior philanthropic adviser; and Pam Tesler Howitt, senior development officer.
The two recently filled positions had been vacant since this past summer, said President and CEO Neil Steinberg, but the existing three staff members’ experience and long-standing relationships with donors enabled the foundation to take the time necessary “to recruit people with the right skill sets” to enhance the work, he said.
“Our job is to help make donors’ dreams come true and match them up with needs in Rhode Island,” Steinberg said. “All of our development effort goes back to this. We keep raising money because of the incredible needs in the state.”
Three of the foundation’s best four years for fundraising came in the past three years: $43.7 million in 2013, $38.5 million in 2012 and $70.8 million in 2011, said Steinberg. Initiatives such as Make It Happen RI and It’s All In Our Backyard public-awareness campaign are reaching “a new cadre” of donors, he said.
“We are reaching out to more people in more ways than ever before,” he said. “They are drawn to the basic values we offer like commitment to donors, solid investment returns and sector experts who can help align their philanthropy with their goals.”
Berard has broad experience working with donors who are generous and inclined to give, while Groves has legal expertise that will inform his development work, Steinberg said. The foundation raises money that is invested for the long term to keep paying dividends – money that can in turn be awarded, mostly in the form of grants, to make short-term progress and long-term impact on issues as varied as education, economic development, housing and public health. The end-game is to promote sustainable growth while demonstrating leadership in the community, Steinberg said.
Some donors want to see more immediate effects of their gift, while others are interested in leaving a legacy that can grow. Development officers have a responsibility to “inspire” giving for new prospects and current donors while also providing charitable-planning advice and offering personal-relationship management and customer service, Steinberg said. They also will attest to and uphold the organization’s financial integrity and prudence, he said.
“To me, it’s a conversation,” said Groves. “It’s about listening to that donor. If I’m doing my job, it will emerge: the donor’s passion, goals, what that donor wants to do. Then, it’s incumbent on me to bring the expertise from the Rhode Island Foundation and my colleagues to bear to inform that donor as to what opportunities exist.”
From 2007 until 2014, Groves worked as an attorney at Barton Gilman LLC of Providence. He also is co-founder and was vice president at Schoolyard Inc., a Web-design company that works with independent schools here and abroad.
“I worked with a lot of nonprofits in my law practice and volunteered on boards,” said Groves. “It’s that mission-driven work which I had done in my free time and those organizations I aspire to work with at the [foundation]. I’ll be doing development work exclusively, but working with professional [legal and financial] advisers, my background will assist with that.” Berard’s background includes her founding and operating Ascent Advisors, a philanthropic consultancy, since August 2009, which focused on strategic planning and governance. She also had been executive director of the Butler Hospital Foundation for 10 years, beginning in 2004. She will not pursue the consulting work now that she has joined the foundation, she said.
The North Providence resident is also president of the Rhode Island chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
As a foundation senior development officer, Berard said she is aware that important connections can be made not just with philanthropists, but with people who have an interest in specific causes or charitable organizations. She also is committed to keeping donors’ investments in Rhode Island and working with the people who have the capacity to give.
“I believe the nonprofit and philanthropic community is an economic driver in our state,” Berard said. “Nonprofits are the third-largest sector: they’re able to recruit, earn, raise [and] borrow. So, when we’re able to align donors’ interests with funding needs of an organization, we’re able to leverage their investment.”
Based on gifts, some of the grants the foundation has awarded that have made an impact in the state include a $75,000 grant to the R.I. Department of Education to hire a consultant that helped procure Race to the Top funding and a planning grant that helped lead to the construction of the Sandywoods affordable housing community in Tiverton.
“We’re a lot of times the early seed money [for programs and causes],” said Steinberg. “Grant-program officers have the vision: We will take a little risk. It’s not a perfect science. That’s the hardest money to get sometimes, that early money, but we’re taking an educated risk.” •

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