Fundraising Consultant

RFP : Request for Fundraising Consulting Services Proposal

From : Community Mediation Services of Central Ohio (CMS)

Submissions due by : Friday, August 15, 2025

Project Budget : Approximately $25,000 / Estimated 3-month Time Frame

Return proposals to :

Shelley Whalen, Executive Director

swhalen@communitymediation.com

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 – Seeking a fundraising consultant living in Central Ohio to increase our future capacity to shift from predominantly government funding, toward more support for our housing stability services from corporations, private foundations and individuals.

Housing Stability Program – Overview

This 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 the dismissal of the current eviction action in the tenant's court record while landlords regain 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 devastating harmful effects.

Scope of Work :

1) Assist in the development of a compelling Case for Support for CMS' Housing Stability Program and strategies for its presentation to potential donors.

2) Generate a list of 50 Corporate Entity contacts likely to support CMS' Central Ohio Housing Stability Programming.

• Identify compatible approaches and assist in soliciting support from these corporate organizations.
• Identify and help recruit a minimum of 3 new corporate reps to serve on the CMS Board of Directors.

3) Help develop and direct strategies to turn 500 current individual donor prospects into maximum number of active givers.

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