SAGE
Summit, New Jersey
www.sagenj.org 

The headline read: “Kresge Foundation Awards $400,000 Challenge Grant to SAGE New Horizons Capital Campaign.” This Kresge Challenge Grant, one of the three awarded to GSI campaign clients in 2003, was surely the capstone on a capital campaign that went on to oversubscribe its goal and raise $7.1 million for SAGE in less than 24 months.

Founded in 1954, SAGE is the oldest eldercare agency in New Jersey and only one of a few such agencies in the U.S. offering a comprehensive array of services from home care to meals-on-wheels to adult companion and day health services. With a staggering 5,000 clients, the only obstacle holding SAGE back from expanding its model senior services were its aged and cramped facilities and expansion of its program endowment.

As the agency prepared for its 50th anniversary, GSI was engaged to conduct a planning study for the SAGE capital campaign and subsequently for on-site campaign direction working closely with the organization’s Executive Director, Jacqueline Vogelmann, and Director of Development, Hillary Brown-Kruchowy. In its nearly fifty years, the most SAGE raised for capital prior to its recently completed New Horizons campaign was $500,000 in the early 1990's.

What was it that propelled SAGE on to raise $7.1 million, which included two seven-figure commitments and 26 gifts of $50,000 plus? The answer to this question is three words: Leadership, Leadership, Leadership. According to GSI’s Senior Vice President, Mary Ann Winters, “the heart, the soul and the lifeblood of this campaign was the untiring commitment of SAGE’s executive staff, Board and campaign committee.”

Co-chaired by Dr. Thomas and Kay Inglesby, the New Horizons campaign committee consisted of Board members and leaders from its hometown of Summit and nearby communities. In short, no task laid out by GSI was too large or too small for the committee ranging from making high-level leadership gift asks, to traveling to Troy, Michigan for a presentation to Kresge, to hosting major gift receptions, to manning the phones for an end of campaign phonathon. The reward for their hard work: a brand new facility and the momentum to take SAGE’s endowment to greater heights as the agency enters its next fifty years of service.