Geological Society of America

GSA is one of the oldest geological societies in the world and serves all of the disciplines of geology and related sciences. They serve over 17,000 members each year. The GSA Foundation, located in Boulder, Colorado, hired The Mason Group to re-organize and increase their private sector fundraising program and, in particular, to increase their operational funding. There were looking for an ongoing relationship with a fund raising consulting firm and we were pleased to give them that service.

Corporate Partnership Support

Over a four-year program of providing training, counsel and hands on solicitation of gifts from individuals, corporations and foundation, we increased the fundraising by 30%. One of the key needs of GSA was to increase their corporate support. This kind of support from Subaru of America Corporation brought over $200,000 per year for four years to the GSA Foundation.

This donation provided support for their educational programs (Subaru Teacher of the Year Series), underwrote their Annual Meeting and provided two new Subaru Outback vehicles for the use of the staff at GSA. This unique partnership also provided the members and employees a VIP discount on new cars and, with the purchase of each car, a donation resulted for the GSA Foundation.

Institutional Change to Increase Operational Support

Products and services provided included extensive staff and board training, development of a Resource Development Audit and a Feasibility Study for a proposed capital campaign. One of our main focuses was to increase non-restricted support. We found that in each appeal for support to their membership and others, there was always the choice of more than 70 funds for restricted funds. The membership/donors primarily responded by selecting one of these funds for each solicitation and the result was that most of the money raised could not be used for general operating support.

We carefully designed a different approach. By offering less information about the funds (although they were available) and by providing the choice of a selection of the "greatest need for support", the prospective donors responded and increased operational support by over 40% in just two years!

Additional work was done on the web site to make it user-friendly for the prospective donors. By adding a line providing an opportunity of adding a gift to the Foundation when they renewed their membership, we were able to realize over 600 new donors to the Foundation in just a period of one year.

The Mason Consulting Group LLC | 9200 Cherry Creek Drive South #23 Denver, CO 80231