Can these 6 syllables help craft your next fundraising strategy?

I believe that there are just three key questions that should form every fundraising strategy plan. Just six words, one syllable each.

What is? What if? What now?

Surprisingly, they rarely come together all at once. I’ll explain why in a bit.

But before that, let me break down the three questions.

What is? A question that makes us look closely at our data, and dive deep into what’s really going on with our donors.

To begin any fundraising strategy conversation, you absolutely have to get into your data. This means getting all your records: donor identities, demographics, giving histories, pledges, bequest commitments, event attendance, contact information, appeals, communications, volunteering, gift officer activity...anything you can possibly warehouse, into one place. That will take technology, a team effort, and collaboration. It will be worth it.

And then, start asking some core questions related to your strategy goals: What do your constituents look like? Do your currently giving donors match? Who is giving what, how much, and when? What appeals do the best, and through which channels? What is the path to a major gift? Do your volunteers give? Where are your engagement gaps? ?(These are just a few).

I recommend you spend the amount of time you really need to get to know your donor base, your constituents, and your engagement program pretty well. Yes, that’s a fuzzy term. You don’t want to end up with analysis paralysis. But you do want to spend substantial time exploring “what is” in your program. You can always get help.

• “What is?” example: A major nonprofit feels a revenue crunch. They feel confident they have significant opportunity to grow leadership giving from current givers. So, they take a look at their donor base. They ask, specifically: how many $500+ donors are there who have given this amount three times or more in the past 10 years? And how many are not currently assigned to a gift officer? They find, surprisingly, that the number is over 2,500.

What if? The question that challenges us to determine the real benefits of dreaming big on transformative change.

This is where you and your team really talk about what is possible. Based on what you see in the data, start to consider what could change. How could your donors look different, be more inclusive? How could your events transform? How could engagement be more meaningful? How could you support or boost gift officers in better ways?

Try to quantify if this as much as possible in real numbers. This will really help you as move into the final action step.

• “What if?” example: The same nonprofit asks, ‘What if we could implement tools and support to officers to help get just one tenth of these donors to make an additional leadership gift in the next year, of $1,000+, to a key initiative? That would be at least $250,000 in additional revenue, which would be transformative.' And they decide that it seems possible, given what they see in the data.

What now? The question that makes us take first action steps toward difficult change.

When you’ve asked the first two questions well, it’s so much easier to take the next step. This always involves taking a leap, but when that risk is both grounded in data and a clear potential for gain, you’re going to feel better and have a better chance of success. I suggest that your ”what now” involve a clear, first step that includes what you will actually do, and how you will measure success.

• The “what now” leap: The organization decides that spending just 10% of this potential new revenue on technology to help gift officers and boost leadership giving from these identified leadership prospects, just $25,000, to get a potential 10x return, is worth it. And they go for it. (spoiler alert: they succeed and raise a lot more.)

What is, what if, and what now: why do they rarely come together at once in strategy planning?

For “what is?”, it’s often a failure to look at the data at hand. Sometimes that data is hard to get, there isn't a culture of analysis, or the real facts are locked away. You’ll need to break down those barriers and get to some real answers if you plan to craft data-informed strategy.

For “what if,” tragically, it’s often a failure to dream of what could be possible. Looking to peers can be helpful, see what others have done. Taking a day off from the “what if” stage can also help. Take a breath from the data. It might even be as simple as sitting at a white board with your team and throwing out ideas until you run out. Some will be good, some won’t make the cut, but take a picture, and save it for later.

“What now,” taking the first step to action, can sometime fall apart just due to turnover. Or, It’s just a failure to follow through to the action step and get strategic change started in a data-driven way. It can be internal politics, inertia, leadership blocks, or just bureaucratic hurdles. I’ll tell you a secret, though. If you’ve really done the first two steps well, you have a much better chance at actually doing something. Because you can justify it with data. And you can explain what the return should be to leadership and the controllers of the budgets.

Use all three questions, and you’ll craft better fundraising strategy, and you'll make real change.

What is? What if? What now? When you use these six syllables, in every strategic planning conversation, you’ll be looking at a much bigger picture, crafting a better donor experience, and probably come much closer to meeting your goals.

So, how do you start to use this methodology? It's not hard. Grab a sheet of paper. Divide it in three. Write down the three questions. Pick a key topic for strategy. Get your team together. Spend half an hour and fill up the page.

Then, go make some change, fundraisers. We need it.

What drives your fundraising success? As we move into the next fundraising fiscal year, I’d love to hear your take on what we should be doing to engage an inclusive, purposeful donor base. Drop your thoughts in the comments here or send me a message.

Acknowledgment: Thoughts for this blog were inspired by conversation with the awesome Susan Frame, Director and Co-Founder of Jakmel Ekspresyon, a place where art, science and creativity come together in an incredible way in Haiti. And by the work of environmentalist visionary Rob Hopkins, creator of From What If to What Next, and other important thought leadership on how we can transform our world.

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