Securing major gifts for a landmark healthcare-adjacent nonprofit

The context

Ronald McDonald House New York is one of the most recognized family-services institutions in American healthcare — a residence and support hub for the families of children receiving cancer treatment and other complex care at New York City hospitals. Its brand is a gift; its fundraising reality is more complicated than outsiders assume.

Under the leadership of Ruth C. Browne — an epidemiologist and public-health executive who arrived with a mandate to broaden the organization’s services — the House needed a development program that could match the scope of that ambition. The existing base of annual donors was loyal but not yet scaled to the level of investment the strategic plan called for.

The problem

The house’s fundraising program was not underperforming by its sector’s standards — it was underperforming relative to what the strategic plan actually required. The existing donor base was loyal and broad, but not scaled to the principal-gift level the CEO’s ambitions demanded. Corporate and institutional relationships were transactional — event-driven rather than strategically aligned. Board members wanted to help but lacked a structured cultivation path that would put their networks to work.

What was needed was not a louder appeal or a shinier event. It was a principal-gift architecture — one that could identify, cultivate, and close gifts of a size that would fund the CEO’s strategic vision.

What we did

NPI embedded alongside the House’s development team and worked directly with the CEO’s office. The engagement spanned several phases:

Strategy. We began by translating the strategic plan into a philanthropic case — a single document the CEO, board, and development staff could all use when talking to major prospects. That case was tested with a small number of close allies before it went anywhere near a cold prospect.

Pipeline. We rebuilt the top of the prospect portfolio — identifying, rating, and researching the individuals and family foundations with both the capacity and the alignment to make principal gifts. We established a moves management rhythm that gave the CEO a structured cultivation path from first meeting to ask, and we managed that rhythm so it ran on schedule rather than on instinct.

Execution. As cultivation matured, NPI worked directly with the CEO on the highest-value solicitations — preparing briefing memos, scripting asks, and debriefing after every meeting. On the institutional side, we helped restructure how the house engaged its corporate and foundation partners, shifting from transactional event relationships toward strategic multi-year commitments tied to the CEO’s programmatic vision.

Stewardship. We installed a stewardship calendar that matched each principal gift with a reporting rhythm — impact updates, site access, and recognition tied to the specific programs donors had funded — so that major gifts became renewable rather than one-time.

The outcomes

The engagement built a major- and principal-gift program scaled to the CEO’s strategic ambitions — moving from a loyal but broad annual base to a structured program capable of securing the philanthropic investment the expansion required. New institutional relationships were opened and moved through cultivation. Corporate partnerships were reoriented toward multi-year strategic commitments. The multi-year advisory relationship with the CEO and board continued well beyond the initial engagement scope.

Ruth Browne’s summary of the work: “The NPI team worked to understand my strategic vision, securing the funding needed to make it happen while achieving significant results.”

Why it worked

Two things. First, the CEO was prepared to spend her time on fundraising — and we built the program around her, not around a staff-level development rhythm. Principal-gift fundraising lives or dies on CEO time, and the House’s leadership understood that from the first meeting.

Second, the work was patient. The largest gifts were built over 18–24 months from first meeting to close. The pipeline was managed to that cadence — not against quarterly development targets. An organization that closes principal gifts does not do so quickly, and does not do so by accident.

It is the kind of engagement that does not translate neatly into a single anecdote — and that is the point. Institutional fundraising at this level is the aggregation of hundreds of small disciplined decisions. Our role was to make sure those decisions were made, tracked, and compounded.