Warren Village’s mission is to serve unhoused and unstably housed low-income single-parent families in the Denver area by providing the space, resources, and support necessary to achieve economic mobility and break the cycles of poverty.
Location: Denver, Colorado
Focus Area: Housing, Economic Mobility, Early Childhood Education, and Family Support
The Challenge
Warren Village, which has been serving the Denver community for 50 years, faced a big challenge: to increase annual revenue by approximately 60% within three years in order to support a significant programmatic expansion. The organization had years of experience successfully running a professional Development function, driven by a full in-house team made up of talented and dedicated people, and had recently completed a successful capital campaign to support a new campus.
But something wasn’t clicking. Staff felt they were constantly underwater, and they struggled to get promising new initiatives off the ground. The team knew, if they wanted to reach their ambitious new goal, they needed:
- An honest assessment of ROI on their current Development strategies to help the team focus its efforts on the activities that would yield the greatest return, and
- Exploration of new strategies and opportunities that would position the organization for significant growth.
The RevUp Approach
RevUp was brought in to do a deep, highly detailed assessment of Warren Village’s development function—diving in to examine every process, role, and system to identify the highest-impact changes. These are the steps we followed:
- Comprehensive Organizational Assessment
We conducted a thorough, ground-up analysis that included:- Reviewing budget data and overlaying it with operational workflows.
- An in-depth analysis of historical donor giving trends.
- Assessing CRM systems and the flow of information across teams.
- Evaluating staff time allocation to maximize efficiency.
- Conducting 35+ stakeholder interviews (internal and external) to identify opportunities and challenges.
- Providing a full board engagement assessment.
- Performing market research on talent pipelines, role structures, and salary benchmarks to align team capacity with sector standards.
- Strategic Recommendations
From this research, RevUp distilled the data down to six core recommendations to retool Warren Village’s development strategy and infrastructure. These insights included a number of specific recommendations for shifting fundraising strategies toward higher-return activities and for elevating and developing the team to support retention and professional growth. - Implementation & Leadership Support
After the team had time to internalize these recommendations, RevUp walked alongside the team through the implementation phase. We worked directly with team members to build their individual workplans, coach them into their new responsibilities, and build key infrastructure and practices to execute on their work.
The Results
Warren Village immediately began acting on RevUp’s recommendations with support from our team, including hiring us to launch and lead their new strategic philanthropy work. In partnering with RevUp, Warren Village:
- Launched a strategic philanthropy task force to support access to major institutional giving networks.
- Established a more efficient development infrastructure that uses staff time more effectively and better aligns with team members’ strengths.
- Created renewed engagement in Development among the Board and leadership teams.
- Streamlined and re-focused events on high-return opportunities, saving resources and maximizing impact.
- Development of a cohesive three-year fundraising plan.
- Development and implementation of new team practices and structures in support of Warren Village’s goals.
Why It Matters
Warren Village has a mission that’s vital for supporting low-income families in Denver, and helping them thrive. As with all nonprofits, they have to make every ounce of their resources work hard for them. By reengineering their development function and helping align leadership, RevUp helped create a stronger, more aligned, and more sustainable growth path for ongoing success.
Ready to level up your development strategy?
RevUp offers the same blend of granular operational assessment and big-picture strategy that helped Warren Village chart a path to major growth. Whether it’s building a team for the future, mobilizing your board, or refining your fundraising approach, we’re ready to dig in and help you make it happen.