House Fundraising/Pennington & Company

[NYCJami]

Just curious if anyone here has used a professional fundraising company like Pennington and Company to lead the capital campaigns for building or renovating a chapter house. If so, what was your experience? If not, any pointer beyond the obvious for raising money via your alumnae base?

Thanks!

[UNLDelt]

We used Pennington for a few years (5 I think) they did fundraising for us and at least one other house I know of for sure on our campus: Sigma Phi Epsilon-who stuck with Pennington for quite a few years and 2 years ago did a $1 million total remodel of their chapter house!!!

We did however recently switch from Pennington, to an alumnus of my chapter who does fundraising campaigns for other orgs and since he's a brother...well, we got one heck of a deal for even more services. Pennington took over the publication and distribution of our alumni newletter (we submitted articles) and did donation solicitations every so often. But, we felt that they weren't doing much more than that. We wanted to expand the actions of our 'fundraising campaigns' to also incorporate alumni outreach and involvment (more than just donations of $$$, kind of an alumni "re-rush" to get them involved in their fraternity again). Our new program utilizes a website directed towards alumni, more event planning and involvment focus, as well as a focus on specific projects or areas of the chapter so that the alumni donating know exactallywhat their money is going towards and why. As well as the traditional mailings and donantion forms in the newsletters.

But Pennington did do ok, it takes a lot of patients b/c depending on your alumni base's demographics in age and resources (age of chapter plays a significant role in that) and the accuracy of your chapter's tracking of alums and their current information (your host institution's alumni assoc. may be able help alot) it may take a few years to build significant capital.

I do sugguest meeting with a representative from Pennington (or any other similar group) to find out more but make sure that their services and plan fit with your needs and expectations.