Fundraising success: It all starts with a plan

Any major fundraising campaign involves a lot of moving parts and challenges. From choosing the right fundraising vehicle to implementing the best fundraising tools and preparing communications that compel prospects to take action - it usually requires the ability to manage many tasks.

To implement and manage a successful fundraising campaign, you need to devise a fundraising strategy. An effective fundraising strategy provides a clear roadmap for you and your team to follow at every stage of the fundraising process, helping you to stay strategically focused and sustainably successful.

A well-researched and articulated fundraising strategy is often be the difference between achieving your goals or running around like the proverbial ‘headless chook’ and getting nowhere.

So what really is the true aim of a fundraising plan?

Well, I like to think of any fundraising plan as being like a blueprint that tells and sells how an organisation plans to raise time, talent and treasure for a particular philanthropic cause, outlining all the strategic actions and objectives you organisation will take to achieve the these three T's and a timeframe to do it.

Your plan should not detail your everyday operational approaches but focus on those high-level strategic imperatives you intend to introduce, renew, or improve upon with your fundraising.

These strategic imperatives should also describe the specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART) actions that will be delivered by a specific person or unit within your organisation within a specific timeframe, with the expectation that this will directly contribute to achieving your strategic objectives.

So what are the actual benefits of having a formal fundraising plan? Well, there are quite a few important things it helps you achieve:

• It provides a clear and living roadmap of the path your fundraising campaign will take now and into the future
• Connects your fundraising campaign into your organisation’s broader mission
• Provides your entire team with a clear idea of their responsibilities for the duration of the campaign
• Specifies the resources your program will require to achieve your goals
• Gives you the chance to set ambitious yet achievable fundraising goals
• Provides a clear reference point for you to make future campaign decisions and resourcing allocations
• Ensures your campaign stays on track.

Important things do you need to consider with your plan

To help you with your planning, I’ve put together some important areas to consider when devising your next fundraising strategy. Areas to give careful thought to should include:

1. Reviewing your present fundraising processes and past campaign performance (if applicable).
2. Setting your strategic why i.e. why are you fundraising and how does this achieve broader organisational goals.
3. Determining what specific (and realistic) goals you will likely set for your new campaign.
4. Determining what the fundraising climate is like at your organisation - will your proposed campaign be supported?
5. Setting a definitive timeframe – how long will your campaign last for?
6. Assessing your strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats as an organisation.
7. Conducting in-depth prospect, competitor, and industry research.
8. Deciding on what fundraising vehicles, tools, and tactics you will use.
9. Devising a compelling story for your organisation (your Case for Support).
10. Deciding on what communications, marketing collateral and channels you will require.
11. Determining how you will thank (steward) supporters?
12. Choosing and tracking specific fundraising campaign KPIs – how will you determine success in the end?
13. Determining what resources you will need to achieve your campaign goals.
14. Specifying who is responsible for achieving individual goals or KPIs.
15. Deciding on how the campaign is to be monitored and reviewed over the life of the plan?
16. Considering future improvements to your strategy and approach – what is the future bigger picture for your fundraising operations?
17. How will your celebrate and promote your successes along the way?

It is a lot to consider, however by methodically addressing these areas sets you up for a much greater chance of fundraising success.

A never-fail planning approach

Once you have considered these above key area thoroughly, it then time to start drafting your plan.??

The flowchart below is an example of a best practice fundraising planning cycle that we use here at AlumGrow Consultancy to keep the entire planning process on track when working with our clients.?

The thing I love about this four phase approach is that it is easy to use and can be applied in almost any fundraising context across any industry.

4 Phase Fundraising Strategic Planning Flowchart - AlumGrow Consultancy

A flat plan to use

In terms of the makeup of your plan and as a matter of best practice, from our research and experience we find that the most effective and successful fundraising plans include the following elements or sections:

1.?An impact theme

For a compelling fundraising plan, it’s not sufficient to simply plan to ask for money. You need more than that – you need a strong vision and something for people to get excited about!

You need an impact theme (and compelling cause) to rally your donors around and to set your organisation apart from all the other not-for-profits asking for donations.

2. Executive Summary (provide landscape context)

Your fundraising plan needs to be put into context. Include revenue data for each of the past three years minimum as background here. It is impossible to make accurate decisions based on only one year of data.?

Historical data over a number of years justifies and supports your fundraising goals and forecasts over the life of your plan.

This section also should be a scene-setter, describing the current and likely future fundraising environment and likely challenges for the sector.

3. Assumptions

This section lists all the assumptions you are making in formulating your fundraising plan. Every organisation makes assumptions as it plans out its fundraising activities for the coming years. List them in this section so everyone in your organisation is on the same page e.g. Foundation Board, Senior Executive, your team etc.

List all of your assumptions up front and know that if one of the assumptions doesn’t bear out, you may need to rewrite part of the plan to map out a strategy for dealing with this.

4. Goals and Objectives

The next step in devising your fundraising plan is to define how much philanthropic revenue you wish to earn from your fundraising activities and how you are going to allocate those earnings.

It might be your goal to use money raised for a number of different projects such as scholarships and bursaries, capital works, research, new learning programs or to defray fundraising overheads. No matter what you do, the funds you get will be for your organisation’s cause.?

If you have multiple goals, it is important to outline separate SMART goals for each. Just ensure your goals are realistic (never based on hope or good luck) and that you use current and past data sources and results as a guide to formulate them.

5. Donor Prospect goals

Whether it’s from events or direct marketing every fundraising plan should include goals on how new and lapsed donors will be brought to the table, and existing donors will be retained.

Try to list out which audiences are untapped in their potential and engage them. Remember that these sources will not be forever, they might not even be with you next year, as such, formulate a plan on how you can retain your current donors.

6. Donor communications and cultivation goals

Including these type of goals answers the questions, “How are we planning to cultivate our donors?” “What will our cultivation paths look like?” and “What are our donor and prospect communication calendars?”

Goals should also include your plans around stewardship and answering questions like, “How do we treat our donors once they make a donation?” “How do we thank and recognise our donors?” and “How do we retain our donors, upgrade our donors, and get them to open up their networks to us?”

7. Fundraising Tactics

This section should detail the tactics you will use to actually make asks and solicit money. Each tactic should get its own subsection with action steps, deadlines, and note who is responsible for implementing them.

8. Campaign Resources

Fundraising plans need to address the expenses relating to fundraising and any high-cost purchases (such as the transition to a new online platform or database) and what the expected ROI is on these investments.

Operating any fundraising operation will not be free. Depending on your fundraising activities, the cost of running your fundraising operations can be substantial and therefore it is important to stipulate exactly what the ROI will be on your campaign taking into account all expenses - including staff resources.

9. Implementing the Plan?

In this section look to briefly outline:?

• Who is responsible for delivering the plan e.g. do you require the support of marketing services, alumni or membership office, advancement services, Foundation Board, external consultants etc.
• Necessary collaborations and partnerships
• Organisational implications
• Contingencies (if things go wrong)

10. Monitoring and Evaluation

This section maps out how you intend to measure and assess your progress. It is important when setting out your key performance indicators that you state how you intend to measure progress as you implement new initiatives or additional campaigns.

Monitoring KPIs will also allow you to identify any weak areas in your strategy and make improvements quickly

11. Campaign Success Timelines

It is always a good idea to include a clear timeline for your fundraising plan and also individual timelines for each fundraising objective. Individual staff should be allocated to each objective or KPI within this.

Get approval on your plan

Once you have drafted your plan, it is now time to present a draft to senior leadership for their review, feedback, and approval to ensure there are no unwanted strategic surprises for them in the future.?

This is a pretty important thing when it comes to future job security, but more importantly, it also takes key decision makers along on the fundraising journey too.

Once you have plan approval, it is then time for campaign launch and plan implementation - exciting times!

A word also on using consultants (like me)...

You might also need to seek outside help to get your fundraising strategy moving along.?

An advancement consultant can be extremely helpful when planning the specifics of your campaign. While hiring an outside consultant like me does represent further additional campaign cost, you’ll see a return on that investment as you leverage their advice and expertise to launch successful campaigns.?

An added bonus of using consultants too, is that your team will have more time to spend on critical things such as cultivation and solicitation while the consultant provides expertise on fundraising strategies, best practices, and technical aspects like prospect research.

Conclusion

A fundraising plan is a critical component of any campaign, as it provides your organisation with a clear vision of how philanthropy can and will play a critical role in helping deliver your organisation’s strategic mission.

While having a knockout fundraising plan won’t always guarantee greater fundraising riches for your organisation, what your strategic blueprint will at least do is lay the foundations for far deeper and more strategic engagement with supporters and keep everyone internally on the same page – and that can only be a good thing for any organisation.

I wish you well with your fundraising planning and remember to dream big because then everything becomes possible!

Need assistance with your fundraising?

AlumGrow is here to help!

AlumGrow are your award-winning experts in advancement consulting, where we assist education providers and not-for-profits of all sizes to grow their fundraising functions using leading-edge frameworks, programs, and project consultancy services.

To discuss how we can help your program book an online discovery call with Alastair?here .?

For more information about our consultancy programs, products and services visit?alumgrow.com.au .

In case you missed these articles…

5 sure signs that your alumni are ready to give

Ten things I’ve learned working in advancement

Fifteen key components to a successful Giving Day

*Alastair Lee is an international award-winning senior thought leader in the Australian advancement industry and has held many key leadership positions over the last two decades in enrolment marketing, admissions, alumni, and fundraising at all levels.

He is also the Founding Director of AlumGrow Consultancy – a firm specialising in advancement consulting to the education and not-for-profit sectors.

Alastair can be contacted via email?[email protected] .

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