Has your organisation spent time creating a fundraising plan for non-profits yet? A substantial number of nonprofit organisations, in particular smaller charities and startups, operate without the aid of a fundraising plan. This may well work in the short term, but when it comes down to it, attempting to run campaigns and events with no clear guiding strategy is not just a recipe for stress, but also underperformance. Nonprofits with clear fundraising plans consistently outperform those without them.
The upshot is that it’s not all doom and gloom – coming up with a strategic fundraising plan needn’t feel daunting or like a mammoth task. This article will help you in creating a fundraising plan for non-profits by providing a step-by-step guide on how to do it. It’s easy enough to do, and with the following advice, you’ll soon have a comprehensive, well-written plan to give you guidance when you’re in the thick of it. It’s an easy fix to many issues that may arise in future.
Why Is A Nonprofit Fundraising Plan Important?
If you don’t have a plan, you wouldn’t be alone. A US study found that 37% of organisations with budgets under $1million, and 22% of organisations with budgets over $1million, didn’t have a definite fundraising plan. The issue is that when the bank account starts to run low, many of these organisations with no contingency plan will go into ‘panic mode’ and rush around to scrape together the funds to keep things running.
Perhaps it works, but it’s not the most effective nor efficient means of doing things. Even if the coffers are full, operating without a solid plan is a recipe for unnecessary stress, and could portend bad things down the line.
So, how do you create a nonprofit fundraising plan to make sure that your organization prospers not panics?
3 Steps For Creating a Fundraising Plan for Non-Profits
1. Set Your Fundraising Goal
First and foremost, it’s important to identify a goal. It’s always best to start with the end in mind: what is your overall goal for your organisation? If this seems too huge a question, break it down into more digestible chunks: what is your fundraising goal for this year? The year after? The next five years? It’s important to note that you ought not to be drawing this number out of thin air – take a look at the needs of your organisation and what you want to carry out, and add it all together to calculate a reasonable sum. Goals should be discussed and cleared with your director(s).
2. Define Your Mission
Once you know how much money you’ll realistically need, the next question to answer is why you need it, and what you aim to do with it. This is your mission, or your message, and a chance for you to justify your decided-upon operating budget. Don’t understate the importance of a mission statement – it’s easy for an organisation’s key message to get lost in a sea of events, campaigns, and marketing collateral. It’s a critical fundraising tool, vital for keeping your supporters cognisant of why they are donating. If your mission is muddled, there is always the risk of supporters jumping ship to find a nonprofit with a clearer objective.
To help with fundraising and marketing efforts, keep your mission at the forefront of what you do:
- When sending out letters, emails, or other communications, include your mission statement at the start/top.
- At events, you can make clear how your supporters are helping by telling stories about how their money has made a difference in getting you closer to realising your mission or giving specific statistics.
- Monthly newsletters are also a fantastic way to keep donors abreast of where their money is going and the impact donations have had on your organisation’s mission.
3. Pick Your Fundraising Strategies
With the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ covered, you can get into the meat of the matter – the ‘how’. What strategies are you going to employ to raise your goal amount for this year, and indeed all the years thereafter? This is best done in detail -for each tactic, come up with a realistic goal, and together these individual goals should add up to your total. (E.g., if you’re looking to raise £10,000 in total, you might aim to raise £5,000 of that via a major donor group, £1,000 through individual giving, and £4,000 at an event).
Common tactics include:
- Individual giving: asking individuals to make donations to your organisation.
- Major Donor Groups: this could include board giving, a development committee, etc.
- Events.
- Participatory fundraising: like marathons, cook-offs, or other fun challenges that supporters can take part in.
- E-Marketing.
- Online and e-giving.
- Grants: government, foundations, or corporate, for example.
There’s no shortage of ways to raise money, and it’s always a good idea to include a good mix of tactics in your plan, and keep an eye on what works and what doesn’t. If you notice some that don’t work for your organisation, these can be taken out of the plan for future years, and your fundraising strategy streamlined in doing so.
4. Set a Timeline, and Reflect Often
It’s also important to set a timeline for your events. For some organisations, this will be as simple as deciding to hold an event in July, send an email campaign out in November, and so on and so forth, but it may be of benefit to go into detail on your timeline – if you have an event in July, when do you need to have the venue sorted, when will you start raising awareness of your event, if you have invitees, when will you send them their invitations? The more you can pre-empt, the fewer nasty surprises you’ll have down the road.
It’s best practice to set aside some time every couple of months to evaluate your plan and strategy. Keep score of numbers – how much you’ve raised, where the money came from, how many new donors you’ve got or new contacts you’ve made. What worked? What didn’t? Adjust your plan as you go, dropping practices that prove unsuccessful and doubling down on those that work.
What’s Next?
It’ll get easier as it goes. Once you’ve succeeded at planning a year’s worth of fundraising operations, you can get your teeth into multi-year plans, with bigger goals and better strategies.
