Creating Your Fundraising Strategy

Successful fundraising depends not on short-term actions, but on a planned and sustained effort to maximise funding opportunities over time.

While it can be challenging to plan in today’s volatile economic and political environment, it is arguably even more important now than when times were easier. So where to start?

Fundraising Review First

As we covered in our last post, the planning process starts with a fundraising review, to answer a range of questions, essentially covering “where are we now and what are our future opportunities”? This will provide a lot of the raw materials you will need and, once it is completed, you are in a position to develop the strategy.

Target Setting

The fundraising strategy should set achievable objectives for each source of funds (individual giving, trusts, companies, events, legacies, major gifts, institutional donors etc), describing how money will be raised, what resources will be needed to do this (in terms of people, information, IT and budgets) and how progress will be monitored.

In some organisations, fundraising targets are set arbitrarily and top down, with little or no consideration of what is actually possible in current conditions. Far better is to build your targets bottom up, taking into account what can actually be achieved in each income stream. By all means set ambitious goals, but only if they are realistic and properly resourced and will motivate your team to achieve them. Otherwise, you are setting yourselves up to fail.

Timeframes

The fundraising strategy needs to take account of short, medium and long term goals and of the time frames appropriate to each income stream. So, for example, if your legacy work is relatively undeveloped, it is only likely to make a significant contribution in the longer term if you are only now starting to invest in it seriously. On the other hand, event fundraising can make a short-term contribution, while trusts can be seen as a medium term opportunity.

Some organisations work on a three year timeframe, others on five years. There is no single correct answer, just what works best for your charity. For the first year of the strategy you will of course need a more detailed work plan, which also then ties in with the job plans for your team members. This needs to be updated each year as the strategy is implemented.

Diversification

One important role that a fundraising strategy can play is to help an organisation to diversify its funding sources over time. We often see charities that are too dependent on a small number of income streams (or even on one source of funds) and which need to diversify in order to become more sustainable and reduce their dependence on external decision makers (especially if these are statutory funders).

A salutary recent example is those organisations that depended on USAid and are now very exposed and need to diversify quickly. So having a diversified income base is a strategic imperative and the fundraising strategy can help to achieve this.

Other Issues

In larger organisations, the fundraising strategy will be lengthy and detailed, but in essence serves the same purpose of setting out an agreed path to follow, identifying the resources to deliver it and enabling the organisation to measure progress against objectives.

The content of the fundraising strategy will vary considerably between organisations, for example, depending on whether you are planning to raise revenue or a major capital sum. However, the principals are the same and even a basic fundraising strategy is better than none at all.

Having an agreed strategy can also be a useful defence when there is organisational pressure to take on more tasks without the resources to do so. If it is not in the strategy, you can reasonably argue it cannot be done, or at least that something else needs to be dropped to make room for it.

Maintaining the Strategy

Once your strategy has been written and agreed, it is tempting to put it on the shelf and to forget about it. However, for it to do its job, you need to see it as a living document that is updated over time and adapted in the light of developments. So each year (at least) you should revisit it, reviewing latest results and updating future income targets. Given the speed of change around us today, the strategy needs to be kept flexible and as light touch as you can make it. It should serve you and not vice versa.

Developing a fundraising a strategy is, of itself, not an instant solution to the fundraising challenge, but it does at least give an organisation a clear map to follow, which can deliver greater financial security in the future. It is a worthwhile discipline that will serve you and your charity well if you invest the time and effort required.

If you need help in thinking through your strategy and determining the way forward, please do contact us on 01903 723519 for a free initial chat. We’ll be happy to help.