Volunteer: Fundraising Launch Strategy + Plan

This is a volunteer opportunity provided by Taproot Foundation, a nonprofit creating social change through pro bono connections.
We are seeking a fundraising strategist and communications professional to help us develop a fundraising launch plan and founding member drive. We need support reviewing and improving our existing fundraising, sponsorship, and membership materials so they are clear, compelling, coherent, and aligned with our organization’s language and values. We also need guidance on how to communicate sponsorship and founding membership opportunities in a way that feels relational, respectful, and mission-driven rather than overly sales-oriented or repetitive. The project will help us identify the most effective campaign model for building early fundraising support without overwhelming our audiences or creating excessive demands on our small team. We want to clarify how to introduce our work, explain the value of becoming a founding member or sponsor, and invite people into deeper engagement. The volunteer will help us assess: - What is working in our current materials - What needs to be clarified, strengthened, or redesigned - Which audiences and potential supporters we should prioritize - How to communicate sponsorship and membership opportunities - What campaign approaches could build trust and sustained support - What alternatives to direct sponsorship we should consider The ideal volunteer will have experience in fundraising strategy, nonprofit communications, sponsorship development, membership programs, or community-centered campaigns. Our goal is to leave the project with a coherent fundraising narrative, improved materials, a clear founding member strategy, and an actionable launch plan that builds long-term support without relying on noisy or overly sales-driven communications.
The volunteer will develop a practical fundraising launch plan and founding member drive strategy based on a review of our current materials, goals, audiences, and capacity. Deliverables may include: 1. **Materials assessment** - Review of existing fundraising, sponsorship, membership, and promotional materials - Recommendations for improving clarity, consistency, tone, and visual coherence - Identification of essential gaps and priority revisions 2. **Messaging framework** - Clear explanation of our mission, opportunity, and funding needs - Recommended language for founding membership and sponsorship - Suggested calls to action and audience-specific messaging - Guidance on communicating benefits, impact, recognition, and participation appropriately 3. **Audience and outreach strategy** - Identification of priority audiences, including prospective members, sponsors, donors, partners, and community supporters - Recommended outreach methods for each audience - Suggestions for relationship-based outreach, warm introductions, partnerships, and community engagement 4. **Campaign plan** - Recommended campaign structure and timeline - Pre-launch, launch, and follow-up phases - Guidance on tone, frequency, storytelling, and avoiding communication fatigue - Alternative strategies such as founding circles, recurring giving, events, peer outreach, or partnerships 5. **Implementation tools** - Campaign roadmap and calendar - Outreach and follow-up tracker - Sample email, sponsorship message, founding member invitation, or social post The final plan should distinguish essential next steps from longer-term opportunities and give our team a realistic, sustainable way to build fundraising support.
Climate House US ("Climate House") Mission: Climate House is a creative think tank using the arts to illustrate actionable pathways forward—and bring them to life. Our Mythos Embodied Climate: Climate change is not the abstract, technical issue it’s often framed to be–but a universal, ambient one experienced through our bodies and daily lives. CH communicates using universal sensory language, to reintegrate our understanding of climate change as real in the felt sense, and as a core defining issue shaping everything around us. Universal Sensory Language: By speaking this universal language of the senses, we can communicate in a language everyone speaks and understands. This helps reframe climate as an everyone issue–providing an opportunity for the general public to reclaim their agency in understanding it and engaging with its solutions creatively, collaboratively, and meaningfully. Culture-First: Culture is the fabric of daily life. CH uses a broad suite of cultural tools to meet people where they are, designing programming that is audience-tailored and culture-first, recognizing this as the carrier oil for engaging with more complex topics. Show-not-tell: Because seeing is believing, we design programs that show, not tell. All of our programs are seared with a blueprint, grounding solutions on the experiential plane, allowing our audience to feel solutions that are so actionable, they can taste them.

Work arrangement
Yes