Featuring: Jena Ashby, Relationship and Resource Director, Nonprofit Support Network, and Kallie Sulanke, Chief Community Partner for Outreach & Donor Relations, The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County
The Challenge
The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County knows that providing funding is one way to support nonprofits, but it’s not the only way. Funding is critical, but relying on a single source isn’t sustainable for most organizations, and many struggle with fundraising.
“We had some really great executive leaders, but there was a deficit in fundraising skills and how to build a strong fundraising program,” shared Kallie Sulanke, Chief Community Partner for Outreach & Donor Relations at the Foundation. So in 2019 they started a program that supports sustainability in development by bringing expert guidance to local nonprofit leaders.
“It is helpful if organizations can build their own fundraising programs that include a wide variety of funding options, including individual donors,” Kallie said. That gap, between what nonprofits needed and what any one funder could provide, is what first brought the Community Foundation to Loring Sternberg and Associates.
Why LSA?
The Foundation wanted to go beyond a one-off workshop and build a partnership to support ongoing development specific to Muncie and Delaware County. The customized programming LSA provides meets the individual needs of each cohort served. With deep local knowledge of the nonprofit landscape, the Foundation wanted a partner with experience that stretches across the industry. At the center of it all: relationships that grow and adapt.
The Approach
The Foundation and Adam piloted what they called Core Fundraising Training in 2019: a cohort-based program that walked participants through the modules needed to build a strong, diversified fundraising plan. The first cohort was small and deliberately so, roughly a dozen people. This allowed Adam to teach material relevant to the whole group while still leaving room for personalized advice. The program also incorporated a few sessions from the Fundraising School’s more academic curriculum, timed and aligned so the two approaches reinforced each other.
The pilot went well enough that the Foundation ran it again in 2021. That same year, the Community Foundation was in the process of creating the Nonprofit Support Network (NSN) as a new supporting organization dedicated to strengthening local nonprofits. Core Fundraising Training became NSN’s signature program with biennial cohorts and support from Jena Ashby, Relationship and Resource Director, Nonprofit Support Network. Participation is by invitation; NSN and Adam look specifically for the staff whose roles and organizations signal real need and strong commitment to the six-month learning cohort.
A “Wow” Moment
Ask Kallie for the story that best captures what the training makes possible, and she points to Julie Borgman, longtime director of Red-tail Land Conservancy. Borgman joined the first cohort as a seasoned executive, someone the team was initially hesitant to invite for fear the material would feel too basic. Instead, she embraced it completely. One idea from the training, personal notes for donors, stuck with her: rather than handwriting every letter, she had a handwritten note printed on sticky notes and applied it to select donor mailings. “The number of people who responded to that because of that feeling of connection was huge,” Kallie said. It became something of a signature of how her organization treats donors and proof that the training’s lessons became lasting institutional habits, not just good intentions during a workshop.
Jena adds that people often talk about their feelings of connection to others in the cohorts and resource groups that developed from them. She notes that relationships go beyond transactional professional networks and bring a personal, community feel while bridging the span of experience and expertise from early career to well-established nonprofit professionals.
The Results
Across five cohorts since 2019, Core Fundraising Training has helped dozens of nonprofit professionals build fundraising programs that are still running years later, from Red-tail Land Conservancy’s donor stewardship practices to the individual-giving programs several other alumni built and continue to run today. Participants who saw the most benefit have often returned as informal mentors for later cohorts, telling newer participants the program is worth the time. “It’s just really a big win,” Kallie said.
The impact doesn’t stop at the organizations that sent people through the program. One participant, a development professional, left the nonprofit sector entirely, but the training left its mark. She has since served as board chair for multiple nonprofits, including one that now hosts one of the most successful in-person fundraisers in town, complete with the donor follow-up needed to sustain long-term support. “We know that the value of investing in individuals, not just organizations, was really important as an outcome of that program,” Kallie said.
The partnership has also grown well beyond the biennial cohort. Adam’s monthly facilitation of NSN’s Resource Development Huddle gives nonprofit fundraising staff ongoing access to his expertise between formal cohorts, and NSN and Adam now regularly compare notes on emerging needs, keeping the offerings fresh and relatable.
Final Thoughts + Impact
Both Kallie and Jena describe a mindset shift that came out of the program. Of NSN’s most recent new-executive-director cohort, only two participants are still in the same role a year later. Jena admits that once gave her pause. “We’ve really had to learn this early on with Core Fundraising: to not think about it as investing only in the organization that the person works in, but that we are investing in the professional education of a sector.”
Kallie reaches the same conclusion from her own experience: skills built through the program travel with people, whether they change organizations, move up, or leave the nonprofit sector altogether. It’s a mark of success, not a limitation of the training.
With Core Fundraising Training already on the calendar for 2027 and Adam and Jena continuing to adjust each cohort to what nonprofits and funders are hearing from each other, the partnership continues to grow and evolve for meaningful impact.
About the Organization
Nonprofit Support Network (NSN) was established in 2022 as a supporting organization of the Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, through an eight-month planning process led by a steering committee of six local organizations with expertise in nonprofit coaching and support. NSN’s mission is to ensure a healthy, well-supported, and sustainable nonprofit sector in Muncie and Delaware County, organized around six pillars: access to funding, access to training, access to shared services, planning and execution assistance, collaboration and partnership development, and relationship building.
