RIF melds marketing, planning departments

RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION president and CEO Neil D. Steinberg at the Foundation's 2012 Annual Meeting. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION/STEW MILNE
RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION president and CEO Neil D. Steinberg at the Foundation's 2012 Annual Meeting. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION/STEW MILNE

A story only gets heard if someone’s telling it.
That was part of the thinking behind The Rhode Island Foundation’s recent decision to form its new department of strategy and public affairs to better align and integrate its marketing and planning resources.
“Our organization is one where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” said Jessica David, the newly named vice president of strategy and public affairs. “Our story is much more powerful when you see the whole picture. We need to do a better job of communicating and telling that.”
Neil D. Steinberg, foundation president and CEO, announced in late February that the foundation was combining the staff and responsibilities of its communications and marketing department with the planning, strategy and special-projects department.
The move, he said in a statement, was made to adapt to the organization’s changing needs.
“As a philanthropic and civic leader, The Rhode Island Foundation continues to grow and transform,” Steinberg said. “Our new strategy and public-affairs team will help enhance the foundation’s core business of fundraising and grant-making by aligning it with innovative, new initiatives that help us and all Rhode Islanders build for the future.”
Organization shifts, even when they can appear abrupt, can be an essential tool for nonprofits looking to realign their fundraising priorities.
The Johnson & Wales University Culinary Arts Museum announced in late February it would close for a year for an inventory that is part of developing a new strategic plan, under the helm of former Rhode Island School of Design President Roger Mandle, to expand the museum’s reach.
The Habitat for Humanity Rhode Island – Greater Providence is in the midst of realigning its fundraising focus by targeting more corporate sponsorships and strategic partnerships to solve what Executive Director Connie Hanner has called a cash-flow crisis. “You can have the best research-based idea and strategy but if there isn’t any philanthropic support for that, if you can’t get someone to pay for the service you provide, it’s like a tree falling in a forest where there’s no one to hear it,” said Bernie Beaudreau, executive director of Serve Rhode Island, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of Rhode Islanders engaged in volunteer and service programs. “The nonprofit has to ask where it is in that spectrum.”
David had been working as vice president for strategy, planning and special projects. She has been with the foundation since 2006 and first joined as a special-projects officer after working in several capacities at HousingWorksRI.
“It’s [really about] the importance of that level of integration among all the things that we do,” David said. “We really are in this period of transformation that builds on a very traditional model of fundraising and donor stewardship and grant-making but that incorporates a lot more proactivity in those areas.”
David said part of more closely aligning planning and marketing efforts is recognition of needing to tell the foundation’s story in a “comprehensive way.”
“In the past we haven’t always been as nimble as we really need to be,” she said. “So it’s time to set up the internal structure that really allows us to respond to needs in the community.”
The foundation embarked on a new strategic mission in 2010, meant to guide its work for the next three to five years, in which the organization was to work to “be a catalyst for positive change” by helping to develop solutions to the state’s longstanding challenges through grant-making, outreach and other community investments.
David said the foundation likely will kick off its next planning process sometime this year. •

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