Public schools suffering from a loss of tax revenue and declining financial support are increasingly turning to education foundations to finance innovative programs, provide special training for teachers, and give students a greater chance to succeed. These foundations have long relied primarily on corporate donations and grants. But now some foundations are finding that cultivating individual donors provides even more financial stability...

The Pinellas Education Foundation in Largo, Florida, was one of the first four education foundations in the state and is one of the most successful in the country. They serve 115,000 students at 145 schools with an annual budget of $5 million. The foundation is well-established and had a good track record of raising funds from retired school employees and corporate donors, but they didn't have a system for reaching out to the general community—before Benevon.

According to Terry Boehm, the foundation's president, the focus of K–12 fundraising from individuals for too long has been strictly targeted on chocolate bar sales, spaghetti dinners, and coupon books. There is nothing wrong with these kinds of activities, but the downside is that these types of fundraisers don't engage the serious donor.

"The [Benevon] Model has helped us a lot with raising the bar for individuals," Boehm said.

Boehm's team now gives potential donors an up-close look at how the foundation changes lives through programs like "Enterprise Village," which offers fifth-graders business experience in consumer enterprises, and "Finance Park," which gives eighth-graders the experience of what it's like to live on a certain salary and budget for things like buying auto insurance and paying the power bill, and then having to recalculate the budget due to a setback, such as a water heater going out.

In the Pinellas Foundation's first year of Benevon Workshops and coaching, they raised $1.5 million at their "Changing Lives" breakfast in March 2006 with just 360 people in attendance. Richard Jacobson, a man from Iowa who winters in Pinellas County, was very moved by the inspiring breakfast. Jacobson had already been to a Point of Entry^® Event and had made a minor gift to a scholarship effort. After the breakfast, he told Boehm that he was interested in making a "significant" contribution. He ended up pledging $1 million, and the community's new culinary academy will be named in his honor.

The small community of Fort Collins, Colorado, is also home to an education foundation that can vouch for the effectiveness of cultivating individuals. Marcy Lynn McNeal, the executive director of the Poudre School District Foundation, which serves 23,000 students at forty-five schools, said when she first joined the foundation, they were fundraising the old-fashioned way by calling up personal contacts, or "strong-arming the Rolodex." She said this technique worked the first year but not the second, and she knew that they needed a different approach.

"What we were doing was counterintuitive to me," she said.

The foundation in Fort Collins implemented the Benevon Model on their own without attending a workshop, and they raised $140,000 in gifts and pledges. After attending their first workshop, they raised $440,000, and they have subsequently continued with training through the 201 Workshop and will be attending the 301 Workshop this summer.

Stacy Carlson, the executive director of the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations—the umbrella group for Florida's sixty education foundations—said she wants to see more education foundations using the Benevon Model because it offers the tools to create an exciting, non-threatening approach to engage board members and other volunteers in fundraising for their foundations.

Carlson is so committed to bringing this approach to more education foundations that she has put into motion a special Benevon 101 Workshop customized just for education foundations to be held November 7–8, 2006, in South Florida.

"Fundraising for K–12 education is unknown territory. People don't understand it. This model provides an easy process for education foundations to begin telling their compelling stories and cultivating individual donors and even corporate donors," Carlson said. "It brings our fundraising activities all together with a system that takes our efforts to the next level."