Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center hires fundraising consultant

IOWA CITY - In an effort to diversify funding streams and lessen the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center's reliance on city funds, center officials have hired a firm to create plans for strategic fundraising and marketing.

The city and Senior Center signed a contract - with both the city and center paying $4,000 - earlier this year with Wastyn & Associates to have the Quad Cities firm develop a plan to reach a larger portion of the population and increase revenue to the center through increased memberships and donations.

Center coordinator Linda Kopping said the center wants to raise revenue because of growing concern property tax reform, which city officials say will cause a considerable drop in local tax revenue, will impact all city-funded programs.

'In Iowa City, we have a model senior center here, we want to maintain it,” Kopping said. 'We need this level of funding to do that or we're going to lose the quality of programming so were going to work really hard at accomplishing this feat of fundraising.”

The Senior Center's fiscal 2014 operational budget totaled almost $809,000. Of that, nearly $580,000, or 72 percent, came from the city. More than $59,000 was a quality of life block grant from Johnson County and the remaining approximately $170,000 was raised in donations, grants and money through foundation earnings.

Last year, the center had 1,628 members, with many more visitors taking advantage of free programs and events.

With the help of Wastyn & Associates President Linda Wastyn, the center plans to embark on a long-term fundraising effort focusing on drawing in more memberships and donations.

'The senior center has not really had a lot of experience in large-scale fundraising so (Wastyn) will provide us with some needed information, really get us on our feet and help us get going on this,” Kopping said. 'We need to be looking into the future so that we can have operational funding, not just for next year or the year after, but for the foreseeable future.”

Wastyn & Associates has already hosted eight focus sessions with various community groups related to the center, including government officials, members and staff. Now, an online survey has been created to draw additional public comment. The survey closes July 27 and Wastyn said the hope is to have a strategic fundraising and marketing plan completed this fall.

Regardless of the impending financial need, Wastyn said diversifying the center's revenue will strengthen the organization. 'It's just good non-profit planning to look at your fundraising plans,” Wastyn said.

A separate center committee is exploring the center's membership fees, with the possibility of making adjustments, Kopping said.

While the formal plans are not yet drafted, Kopping said the one thing that's certain is the longevity of the Senior Center.

'There have been rumors that the Senior Center is closing, those rumors have only been rumors, no one has ever had actual plans or thoughts of closing the Senior Center,” she said. 'That's never been on the agenda.”