Bay Area Youth Foundation · the Bay Area

Funding the next
four years of kids who
weren't supposed to make it.

A first-year fundraising plan, and a pitch you can take into a living room tomorrow.

Ki Lee

Candidate · Director of Development

Executive Panel Interview

Thursday · April 30, 2026

Bay Area Youth FoundationAgenda · 20 minutes

What we will do today

Two parts.
One conversation.

A live pitch first — exactly as I would deliver it to a Bay Area family today. Then a frame for how I would grow the work over the first year. Q&A in the last ten minutes.

PART 1 · 10 MIN

A live pitch to a $50K–$250K major donor.

PART 2 · 8 MIN

How I would grow Bay Area Youth Foundation's fundraising in year one.

Q&A · 10 MIN

Where you take it. I'll go anywhere you want.

Part 1 · The PitchSlide 3 of 12

Before I begin

I'd like you to be the donor.

For the next ten minutes, please treat me as if I'm sitting in your living room. The donor I'm imagining is a Bay Area Christian family that has given $5K–$25K over the last few years. I'm asking for a Cohort Pledge of $50K–$250K. Interrupt me with the questions a real donor would ask.

Donor

Bay Area Christian family. $5K–$25K annual history. Ready to step up.

Ask

Cohort Pledge. Adopt a class. $50K (2 kids) → $250K (full 10-kid cohort). $25K per kid × 4 years.

0–1 MIN

Open

Meet the donor

1–3 MIN

Story

Marcus, 5th grade

3–4:30

Bridge

200 in / 90 waiting

4:30–6:30

Ask

$50K–$250K

6:30–10

Close

Sit in silence

Part 1 · The PitchSlide 4 of 12

Cohort Pledge · Ask sizing

Adopt a class.

$25,000 per kid covers the full four-year journey — tutoring, Camp Bay Area Youth Foundation, leadership, faith formation, Churrobots. The ask scales to the donor's capacity, not the org's need.

$50K

Entry Pledge

Sponsor 2 kids

$12,500/yr × 4 years

$100K

Building Pledge

Sponsor 4 kids

$25,000/yr × 4 years

$150K

Champion Pledge

Sponsor 6 kids

$37,500/yr × 4 years

$250K

Full Cohort

All 10 · adopt the class

$62,500/yr × 4 years

$25K

Per kid · 4 yrs

75%

To grade level

200+

Kids served

41 yrs

In EPA

Bay Area Youth FoundationPart 2 · 8 minutes

A shift in posture

Now: how I'd
grow the work.

A pitch is a single conversation. A development office is a system. Here is the system I would build at Bay Area Youth Foundation in year one — and the discipline that has to sit underneath every gift over $50,000.

FRAMEWORK

The three-phase moves: warm, ask, steward.

THE MATH

$1.5M to $3M, broken into five levers.

FIRST 90 DAYS

Listen. Build the bones. Raise on day 60.

Part 2 · Year One ApproachSlide 6 of 12

The framework I run every major gift through

Pre-warm. Ask. Steward.

Major donors don't decide in the room — they decide before and after it. Most fundraising shops over-invest in the ask and under-invest in the two phases that actually move the gift. Here is the discipline I bring to all three.

Phase 1

Pre-gift cultivation.

8–12 weeks before the ask

Identify and qualify — capacity, gift history, affinity.
Two warming touches per month: program update, kid story, tour invite.
Bring the donor into the room — tutoring visit, camp, Churrobots match.
Discovery: what they care about, what they fund elsewhere.
ED or Board intro — gift goes through a relationship, not a stranger.

Phase 2

The ask.

A single, clean conversation

Specific number. Specific outcome. Specific timeline.
One clear vehicle — Cohort Pledge, named tutor seat, capital line.
Make the ask. Stop talking. Honor the silence.
Handle the objection in plain English: finances, faith, kid outcomes.
If "let me think": schedule the follow-up before you leave.

Phase 3

Post-gift stewardship.

Day 1, day 30, quarterly, year four

24-hour: handwritten thank-you, signed by Josie.
30-day: tax receipt + first cohort update with kid names.
Quarterly: photo, paragraph from a tutor, paragraph from ED.
Year 1: in-person impact visit + renewal conversation.
Year 4: 8th-grade graduation dinner with the cohort.

Part 2 · Year One ApproachSlide 7 of 12

The path to $3M annual

$1.5M today → $3M next year.

Bay Area Youth Foundation raised roughly $1.5M last year. The annual goal is $3M. That's an additional $1.5M, broken across five disciplined levers — sized to sector benchmarks, not aspirations.

Lever	What it is	Year-1 add
Major gifts	15 new $25K+ commitments via Cohort Pledge structure	+$525K
Foundations	Six new institutional grants — faith, education, EPA-focused	+$400K
Monthly giving	"Hope Builders" club — 200 sustainers averaging $75/mo	+$180K
Corporate	Six Bay Area corporate partners — sponsorship + matching	+$210K
Capital quiet phase	Lead-gift conversations for facility / scholarship endowment	+$185K
Total new revenue	Five levers, all standard fundraising disciplines	+$1.5M

Sector benchmarks behind every line: 88% of revenue typically from the top 12% of donors · 90%+ retention on monthly · 43% overall industry retention vs. 69% repeat. The plan is conservative against those numbers, not optimistic.

Part 2 · Year One ApproachSlide 8 of 12

First 90 days

Listen. Build the bones. Raise on day 60.

Days 1–30Listen

Meet 50 people. Read every file. Touch nothing yet.

All staff 1:1s · all 8 board members · top 25 donors · 5 lapsed donors · weekly with Josie. No new strategy yet

Days 31–60Build

Stand up the system Bay Area Youth Foundation doesn't have yet.

CRM live in Bloomerang ($125/mo) · donor file cleaned and segmented · gift acknowledgement on a 24-hour clock · moves-management calendar built for the top 50. Clean slate is the advantage

Days 61–90Raise

First $200K–$280K of new revenue closed.

Five Cohort Pledge conversations in motion · two foundation LOIs submitted · Hope Builders monthly campaign launched · Q3 board meeting closes with concrete numbers, not narrative. Day 90 is a checkpoint

Part 2 · Year One ApproachSlide 9 of 12

A working prototype, before day one

I built the CRM before walking in.

Bay Area Youth Foundation doesn't have a CRM today. That's not a problem — it's a clean slate. I spent a week building a working prototype of what Bay Area Youth Foundation's development office can look like, sized to the $3M plan. Yours, regardless of the hiring decision.

DONOR DATABASE

Live Airtable

Donors, donations, campaigns, pledges, interactions. Linked records, segmentation, ready to migrate to Bloomerang.

REPORTING

Board-grade dashboard

Revenue YTD, retention, donor pyramid, LYBUNT/SYBUNT, monthly health. Updates live from the Airtable.

COMPLIANCE

Tax receipt generator

IRS-compliant PDFs. EIN 77-0151434. "No goods or services" language. Generated in seconds.

PROCESS

SOP playbook

Twelve-page operational playbook: gift entry, acknowledgement, stewardship cadence, escalation paths.

PIPELINE

Moves-management view

Top-50 prospect view by stage: identified → cultivated → solicited → closed → stewarded.

WHY IT MATTERS

Day-one usable

Not a deck. Working software. The development office can be operating at standard within 30 days, not 6 months.

Part 2 · Year One ApproachSlide 10 of 12

The candidate

Why me, in one slide.

OPERATIONS

16 years running multi-unit P&L.

Discipline at scale. Numbers, systems, accountability. The same skill set, applied to revenue instead of cost.

MISSION

12 years in youth ministry — on volunteer time.

Anchor Point Ministries. I've been working the mission long before someone offered to pay me for it.

PROOF

$800K Vacaville church campaign + $300K/yr mission funding.

Multi-year capital campaign closed. Recurring mission revenue stood up. I've raised the kind of money this role asks for, just under a different roof.

REACH

English · Korean · Spanish.

The Bay Area donor base is Asian-American, Stanford alumni, Latino faith communities, Pacific Islander leaders. I move easily across all four rooms.

The two halves of my life — operations rigor and youth ministry — have always belonged in the same place. Bay Area Youth Foundation is that place.

Bay Area Youth FoundationThe close

Bay Area Youth Foundation has done this work for 41 years. The team is excellent. The outcomes are real. The mission is unchanged. What you need is a partner who will commit at a level that lets the org do this well — and stay long enough to see what that commitment built.

Ki Lee · Director of Development Candidate · April 30, 2026

Bay Area Youth FoundationQ&A · 10 minutes

Where you take it

What questions
do you have for me?

I came ready to talk about the math, the team, the faith piece, the prior development director, the CRM, the first board meeting, and the salary. Anywhere you want to go.

FOR JOSIE

How I'd partner with you on the top 25 donors.

FOR THE BOARD

What I'd ask the board to do — and not do — in year one.

FOR THE TEAM

Coach, don't replace. The 8 people here are the asset.

Funding the nextfour years of kids whoweren't supposed to make it.

Two parts.One conversation.

I'd like you to be the donor.

Adopt a class.

Now: how I'dgrow the work.

Pre-warm. Ask. Steward.

$1.5M today → $3M next year.

Listen. Build the bones. Raise on day 60.

I built the CRM before walking in.

Why me, in one slide.

What questionsdo you have for me?

Funding the next
four years of kids who
weren't supposed to make it.

Two parts.
One conversation.

Now: how I'd
grow the work.

What questions
do you have for me?