ICJS raises $6.28MM toward $7MM goal while strengthening a culture of fundraising

Learn how the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies strengthened its fundraising approach, deepened donor relationships, and raised nearly 90% of a $7MM campaign to expand its impact toward a healthier interreligious society.

Since 1987, the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS) has brought people together across religious differences through education, dialogue, and scholarship.

Based in Baltimore, ICJS works locally and nationally to dismantle religious bias, champion religious diversity in public life, and strengthen communities. Its programs range from intensive fellowships for educators, clergy, chaplains, and civic leaders to public events, workshops, digital learning, and scholarship.

At the heart of its work is a simple idea: people build greater interreligious understanding by learning with one another, rather than simply learning about one another.

The Challenge:

Religious diversity in the United States continues to grow, but ICJS sees increasing religious bias, division, and misunderstanding as serious barriers to a healthy shared civic life.

The organization wanted to respond by significantly expanding the reach of its work over the next decade. That meant thinking much bigger about fundraising while doing the work with a small team.

ICJS launched Advancing Hope | Dismantling Hate: Campaign for the Interreligious Society, an ambitious $7MM campaign designed to deepen the organization’s impact, reach new audiences, strengthen its public voice, and invest in its physical home.

The campaign would require more than identifying prospective donors and asking for gifts. ICJS needed to engage supporters in meaningful conversations about the organization’s future and develop the fundraising practices and confidence to sustain its work long after the campaign ended.

The Solution:

Capital Campaign Pro paired ICJS leaders Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D., executive director, and Laura Urban, director of development, with Advisor Kristin, who worked alongside the team throughout the campaign.

Through regular advising, Capital Campaign Pro’s online tools, and group calls with other campaign leaders, the ICJS team developed a more conversational approach to major-gift fundraising.

Rather than treating a solicitation as a single ask, they learned to create space for donors to discuss the campaign, ask questions, consider their own goals, and explore what a meaningful commitment might look like.

That approach helped ICJS strengthen relationships with supporters while developing fundraising skills that could continue serving the organization well beyond the campaign.

The Impact:

As of mid-2026, ICJS has raised $6.28MM, approximately 90% of its $7MM campaign goal.

Those funds are positioning the organization to expand and innovate its programming over the coming decade. The campaign is organized around four major areas of investment: reaching priority audiences more deeply, expanding to new audiences, increasing ICJS’s public voice and visibility, and improving the ICJS Bunting-Meyerhoff Center.

Campaign priorities include:

• Equipping more teachers and educators to bring an interreligious framework into secondary schools
• Expanding training and resources for congregations, clergy, and chaplains
• Engaging civic and nonprofit professionals in religious diversity and civic life
• Building partnerships with museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions
• Expanding facilitated dialogues and workshops on urgent interreligious issues
• Growing ICJS’s public scholarship, media, marketing, and digital capacity
• Renovating and expanding the Bunting-Meyerhoff Center, including the creation of a dedicated interreligious prayer room

The campaign’s capital improvements have been fully funded through support from the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Fund and the France-Merrick Foundation.

Just as significantly, ICJS is emerging from the campaign with stronger fundraising skills, deeper donor relationships, and knowledge that will remain with the organization well into the future.

“I feel so incredibly grateful to be at this point in the campaign and to know that so much of what has been learned through this process will stay with ICJS. Empowering nonprofits to be better fundraisers and advocates for their mission/work is truly important work for the health of our civic life. Thank you to CCP for doing what you do and sharing how you do it!”

Heather Miller Rubens, Ph.D., Executive Director and Roman Catholic Scholar, ICJS

ICJS’s experience also changed the way its development team approached individual donor conversations. Laura Urban recalls one board member who initially declined a meeting, saying she already knew how much she planned to give and even named the amount. The team encouraged her to meet anyway.

That conversation produced a very different result:

“Our CCPro advisor, toolkit, and group calls helped us understand the importance of conversation with donors, not just a one-and-done Ask. For example, we had one board member who told us in an email that she didn’t need to have a meeting because she already knew her gift amount (and she named a small number!) We told her that we needed the meeting, as there were many things to discuss. When she came in and sat with us, she was no longer committed to the number she previously named and, through conversation and the exercise of filling out a pledge form and seeing how easy it would be to make a larger gift over several years, she doubled her final gift amount. Fundraising is fun when there is real conversation about joint goals!”

Laura Urban, Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies

Looking Ahead:

With approximately 90% of its $7MM goal raised, ICJS is in the final stretch of Advancing Hope | Dismantling Hate.

The campaign is giving ICJS the resources to deepen its work with educators and religious leaders, form new civic and cultural partnerships, increase its presence in the public square, and strengthen the physical home from which much of that work grows. Its campaign case describes the ultimate goal as helping create a society where people of every religion, and no religion, have an equal voice in public life and can flourish together.

“ICJS had a clear and compelling vision for the future, but a small team with very little campaign experience. Yet, from the beginning, they committed to a growth mindset and willingness to try new things. Heather, ED, learned how to make asks that were meaningful to the donor. Laura and the campaign team were tenacious in pursuing the organization’s largest-ever fundraising goal. By combining best practices with ICJS’s culture of belonging and inclusion, the campaign was a great success!”

Kristin Raack, Capital Campaign Pro Advisor

The campaign has also strengthened ICJS itself. Heather’s reflection captures an outcome that won’t appear in the final fundraising total: what the team learned about fundraising, relationships, and advocating for its mission will remain with the organization after the campaign is over.

Laura’s experience with the board member who doubled her gift shows what that growth looks like in practice. Sometimes the path to a larger gift isn’t a stronger ask. It’s a better conversation.