Building a Fundraising Foundation
How Mental Health Connections Ran Its First Structured Year-End Campaign and Kept Going
Results at a Glance
"Recovery happens through participation."— Michael Dunn, CEO, Mental Health Connections
The Organization
Mental Health Connections (MHC) is a Concord, California–based nonprofit serving adults with serious mental illness across Contra Costa County. Founded in 2008, MHC operates on a ~$3.5M annual budget and runs three integrated programs: Connections House (Northern California's first Clubhouse International–accredited program), two Peer Connections Centers, and Connections Transit Support.
" At Mental Health Connections, recovery isn’t a program, it’s a relationship."— MHC Board Appeal Letter, 2025
In 2025, the organization welcomed more than 700 members across Contra Costa County, shared over 12,000 meals, conducted 232 outreach visits, and delivered 98,000 hours of programming. With no dedicated development department, fundraising has lived with leadership and the board.
The Challenge
MHC came to Kindest in fall 2025 with the assets many strong emerging nonprofits have, and the gaps most of them share.
What MHC had: a committed board, a loyal donor community, a clear mission
What MHC didn't have:
- A structured year-end campaign
- A fundraising platform: donations ran through PayPal, which could accept a gift but not tell a story, segment donors, or track a campaign.
- Donor intelligence: records lived across spreadsheets and a legacy database with no view into giving patterns or behavior.
- A way to scale board generosity: giving depended on individual board members activating their personal networks — effective, but not repeatable.
The question Kindest was brought in to answer was not just how to run a better year-end campaign. It was how to build a foundation for long-term, sustainable fundraising, starting with the assets MHC already had: a committed board, a loyal donor community, and a mission that people genuinely want to support.
The opportunity was there. It just needed a strategy behind it.
The Engagement
Kindest began with an audit of MHC's current fundraising operations and developed a comprehensive year-end strategy from the ground up. The team then built and executed the full campaign, which covered content, copy, and campaign pages, from early November 2025 through the new year.
Rather than generic nonprofit messaging, the campaign led with real people at every turn. Board members shared personal reflections on why they serve. Members told their own stories of recovery and belonging. The approach was deliberately relationship-first, treating donors as partners in MHC's mission rather than targets of an appeal.
The campaign included both a digital email series to MHC's donor community and a direct mail appeal to a curated group of supporters, an intentional multi-channel strategy designed to reach donors where they were most likely to respond.
Before & After
The Results
MHC set out to raise $50,000. Mid-campaign, momentum justified raising the target to $65,000. The campaign closed at $71,108, 42% over the original goal and ~10% over the stretch goal.
What drove the result:
- Offline gave more per donor. The direct mail appeal and board-led asks delivered the highest average gift amounts and the majority of dollars raised.
- Online proved the channel works. Email-driven gifts were smaller but consistent, confirming the donor community responds across channels — a base to build on.
- Stories outperformed appeals. Emails anchored in a specific member journey or board reflection had measurably higher open and click rates than general appeals.
- Attribution, for the first time. UTM tracking on the Kindest platform gave MHC channel-level visibility into what was working: the foundation for every campaign that follows.
The $71,108 matters. The instrumentation built to produce it matters more.
The campaign finished at $71,108, exceeding the original goal by 42% and the stretch goal by nearly 10%.
The Ongoing Partnership
MHC retained Kindest after the campaign for ongoing fundraising, communications, and development operations support. The work now — donor segmentation and stewardship, a year-round communications calendar, board reporting, and the systems that turn one strong campaign into a program.
For an organization without a development department, that's what fractional support looks like in practice: Kindest is the development department.
Key Takeaways
For emerging nonprofits considering a similar engagement, MHC's story points to five things:
- A donor base and a willing board are assets that just need a system to activate them. MHC had both. What was missing was strategy, copy, and execution.
- Multi-channel strategy matters. Combining a digital email series with a curated direct mail appeal reached donors across channels and drove results at every level of giving.
- Personal storytelling moves donors. Emails anchored in real member stories and board reflections consistently outperformed generic appeals, in open rates and in giving.
- Fractional support lets lean teams run campaigns they could not manage alone. MHC has no development department. Kindest became one.
- The first campaign is a starting point, not a finish line. The year-end engagement gave MHC proof of concept. The ongoing partnership is building the infrastructure for lasting fundraising growth.
CEO Quote
"Kindest helped us build the foundation we needed to grow. This was not about one campaign. This was about building systems and relationships that will support our work for years to come.”— Michael Dunn, CEO, Mental Health Connections