We Build Campaigns with Backbone
We counsel your campaign from the first planning question through the public launch. We build its case, train the people who present it, and create the materials that take it to every donor. Work that makes your team sharper, your case clearer, and your campaign stronger.
How Begins with Why
You’re about to launch a campaign. The goal takes your breath away. The questions pile up: How many donors? How much time? How big a team? But before any of that: why should anyone care? Nail your answer and donors will follow.
Our Strategic Framework:
Why Now?
The urgency that makes waiting impossible: the convergence of opportunity and necessity.
Why Here?
Your unique position to deliver transformation: why your institution, and only yours.
Why This?
The specific impact that matters most: the precise change that transforms communities.
The Engine Behind the Creative
Good-looking campaign materials are common. What makes ours different? Every creative decision is grounded in strategic thinking.
When the same minds develop both strategy and expression, your campaign speaks with consistency. The case statement doesn’t just look right. It answers the questions donors are actually asking.
This is the “plus” in our approach: creative work powered by strategic depth, strategy and soul working as one. It comes with every engagement, whether you hire us for communications alone or for counsel and communications together.
Designed Around Your Team
Every institution has different internal capacity and existing partnerships. We structure our engagements to fit your reality, and to leave your team stronger than we found it.
Campaign Counsel
Campaign planning, feasibility studies, priority setting and strategy for leadership gifts, from the first planning question through the public launch.
Communications
The case, the fluency training and the materials, built to fit the plan your campaign counsel has already set. We coordinate with them so you don’t have to.
Both, From One Team
One team plans the campaign and builds its case, training and materials. The case your president approves is the case every donor hears.
Across the Campaign Lifecycle
We support campaigns at every stage, with counsel and communications. Start wherever you need us.
Articulation
Clarify the campaign’s connection to institutional vision.
We start with visioning sessions with your senior leaders. From there we shape the campaign rationale (why now, why here, why this), the pillars it rests on and the funding priorities that build it. See each step.
Planning
Structure the campaign plan and test assumptions.
With the rationale set, we help you build a sound campaign plan, test it with the people who will fund it, and create the materials that testing needs.
Leadership
Equip champions for the quiet phase.
The quiet phase is where leadership gifts are won. We shape the strategy for those gifts, and build the tools and fluency your team needs to ask with confidence.
Public
Expand engagement to broader audiences.
As the campaign goes public, we create the assets that inspire a wider range of stakeholders and reinforce your institutional brand.
Wrap / Pivot
Sustain momentum and build lasting capacity.
Campaigns end, but institutional advancement doesn’t. We help you solidify internal capabilities, extend brand momentum, and pivot to what’s next.
What We Deliver
Five services, from the first plan to the last donor. Hire us for one or all five. We lead where you need us and work alongside the team and consultants you already have.
Campaign Counsel
Campaign planning, feasibility studies, priority setting and strategy for leadership gifts. Senior counsel at the table from the first planning question through the public launch.
Build the Case
A campaign rationale that holds up with your most skeptical prospect, then the theme, messaging framework and creative platform built on it. One narrative that holds together across audiences and channels.
Make the Case
Fluency workshops, coaching and tools that prepare gift officers, deans and volunteers to make the case in their own words and adapt it to any donor.
Campaign Materials
Leadership cases for support, unit brochures, proposals, campaign websites and video, all built from the same case. When you need to reach more donors than your team can meet, we add personalized digital experiences through Ovrture, our sister company.
Lasting Capacity
When we leave, the case, the fluency and the tools stay. Your next hire steps into a system that belongs to your institution, and your next campaign starts from higher ground.
Work That Earns the Gift
Campaign materials that connect an institution’s plans to what its donors care about.
“Foster Avenue was incredibly responsive and a true partner. You listened and learned the true essence of Muhlenberg and that came through in all our campaign collateral. You all were tremendous partners who provided superb strategic guidance and partnered with us to go beyond the scope of the original project outline. The team consistently remained calm under pressure and supported us with patience and class. We would highly recommend Foster Avenue to others.”
Rebekah Brown
Vice President for Advancement, Muhlenberg College
Let’s Talk About Your Campaign
Whether you need campaign counsel, campaign communications or both from one team, tell us where your campaign stands.