Planning for Growth in Fundraising
When planning your fundraising activities, and before you develop your next strategy, a good place to start is with a fundraising review. This will help establish what you are currently doing well, how you could do better and where the gaps are. Crucially, it will also identify where your best future opportunities lie and help you decide where to invest for growth.
Some key questions a review seeks to answer include:
Are our current activities achieving their benchmark returns on investment (ROI)?
Are we investing in the best areas or are we over reliant on our traditional income streams?
Which aspects of our fundraising are growing or declining and what can we do about them?
What activities should we stop and which are the new ones to pursue?
Are there any obvious gaps in our fundraising strategy?
Are our donor acquisition and development activities working properly?
Do we have the skills we need to optimise future income or do we need to invest in training our team for the challenges ahead?
Are our fundraising materials as effective as they could be?
How do we compare with similar charities?
Are we making the best of our contact networks?
Are we maximising our use of data effectively?
A fundraising review can either look at your whole income generation, or at specific areas such as your trust fundraising or individual giving.
Sometimes a review will also focus on the known problems or challenges a charity faces. Either way, conducting a fundraising review every few years provides a very useful snapshot of where you are now and where you could take things in future.
Critically, a review’s findings help you decide where to invest for future growth and feed into the next planning stage, which is the development of your fundraising strategy.
Some charities conduct a review internally, while others seek external input, which is more objective and also brings wider knowledge. Where there are sensitive issues to deal with (for example underperformance) this can often be more easily addressed with outside help. Although there is a modest cost involved, this should more than repay itself in future results.
Ultimately, a fundraising review is an important part of the planning process and is a good investment of time and money to ensure your charity is making the best of its opportunities.
If you would value a free chat about help with a review or the fundraising challenges you face, please contact Ben on 07449984604 or email ben@wgconsulting.co.uk
