The Endowment Building Institute (EBI) gives your team the training, tools, and expert guidance to launch or expand a sustainable endowment program.
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The Endowment Problem
Most nonprofits know an endowment matters. Few have a team, a plan, or the confidence to start one. Boards ask about it. Donors bring it up. And without a clear process, it stays a someday project instead of a funded reality.
What Is the Endowment Building Institute?
The Endowment Building Institute (EBI) is a six-session cohort program built for nonprofit teams who are ready to establish — or strengthen — an endowment. Led by Benefactor Group’s fundraising consultants, each session blends expert instruction, interactive discussion, and hands-on assignments your team completes between sessions. EBI is available in-person or online, so your team can join in the format that works best.
Every participating organization receives:
- A curriculum notebook and The Endowment Handbook, written by the Benefactor Group team
- Customized organizational tools built for your endowment program
- Six live, interactive sessions with real-time coaching and peer discussion
Make endowment doable with the experts who wrote the book.
What Your Team Will Learn
EBI walks your team through six core sessions, each building toward a complete, board-ready endowment program. By the end, your team walks away with a donor prospect list, foundational endowment infrastructure, and an action plan sized to your organization’s real capacity
Session One: Understanding Endowment and the Case for Endowment Support
Define endowment and reserves
Explore why it matters now
Draft a case for your organization
Session Two: Types of Gifts and Necessary Policies
Understand the gift vehicles donors use and the policies your organization needs to receive them
Session Three: Identifying, Cultivating, Engaging, and Soliciting Donors
Find what motivates planned giving donors
Identify the right prospects
Learn how to solicit with confidence
Session Four: Caring for Donors and the People They Trust
Design a legacy society
Build relationships with professional advisors
Set recognition and stewardship standards
Session Five: Marketing Endowment and Planned Gifts
Translate your case into messages
Identify priority audiences
Choose the right channels and messengers
Session Six: Planning, Measuring Success, and Building on It
Define short- and long-term measures of success
Set performance indicators
Develop a performance management plan you can take to your board
Who EBI Is For
Funders
Community foundations, United Ways, and regional collaboratives strengthen the causes they support. A community foundation that brings EBI to its grantee network grows agency funds under its own management; a United Way deepens the long-term resilience of its partner agencies; a regional collaborative builds permanent assets across the causes it cares about.
Membership and Affiliate Systems
Associations, denominations, and national federations build durability across their networks. A national federation strengthens the capacity of its local affiliates.
Let's Connect
Whether you are starting an endowment, strengthening planned giving, or building reserves, we will build with you.