Fundraising Consultant

Request for Proposal Issued February 13, 2024

Community Mediation Services of Central Ohio (CMS) is seeking a Fundraising Consultant with a project time frame of approximately 6 months and budget of $25,000. Submissions due by: February 28, 2025 (able to begin work by March 10, 2025). Return proposals to Shelley Whalen, Executive Director, at [email protected].

Background:

History/Mission of CMS

CMS is a full-service conflict management resource center located in Columbus. For more than 35 years, CMS
has been devoted to preventing the harmful effects of unresolved conflict on individuals, families, organizations, and communities. By providing and teaching state of the art non-adversarial conflict management strategies, CMS empowers disputing parties to reach lasting, satisfying resolutions to their conflicts while preserving their critically important personal and professional relationships. Our agency has 12 employees and has a current annual budget of $785,000.

Our Need

CMS is seeking a fundraising consultant to increase our future capacity to shift from predominantly government funding more toward corporate and individual support for our Housing Stability Program.

Housing Stability Program

CMS’ Housing Stability Program provides tenants at imminent risk of eviction and their landlords with access to specially trained, impartial facilitators who assist parties in working out a voluntary resolution to their eviction related dispute. Documented settlement agreements, enforceable by the court, allow tenants to maintain their current rental housing and for their landlords to receive their past due back rent; OR for tenants to receive adequate time to move to alternative stable housing and dismissal of eviction action in tenant’s court record, while in return landlord is able promptly resume possession of their rental property. This program also provides low-income tenants at high risk of eviction with a FREE 2.5 Hour Eviction Prevention Education workshop that describes and refutes 10 major myths about eviction that tenants tend to believe and as a result, often lead to the loss of tenants’ housing, due to eviction. The goal of the Eviction Prevention Education workshop is to increase tenant knowledge about the eviction process and effective strategies for avoiding its harmful effects.

Scope of Work:

1) Generate a list of 100 Corporate Entity contacts likely to support CMS’ Housing Stability Programming.
• Develop and implement compatible approaches for soliciting support from these organizations that results in a minimum total of 100k from a min of 10 corporate donors.
• Develop strategies for cultivating first time corporate donors so they may become renewed contributors, moving them from lower level to higher level contributions.
• Identify and help recruit a minimum of 3 new corporate reps to serve on the CMS Board of Directors.
2) Help develop 500 current individual donor prospects into active givers. Seeking a minimum of $25,000 in annual support from current prospects.
3) Identify and help secure funding to create a long-term development plan that includes a roadmap to the hiring of a full-time development professional, along with funding to begin implementing such a plan.