A fundraising strategy is key to ensure the relevance and effectiveness of your fundraising actions. It is also a source of motivation for your team as everyone knows what he/she should do and how it relates to the global fundraising objective. Yet, a lot of small to medium-sized organizations do not have a clear fundraising strategy in place. 

In this article, you will find key information that I hope will convince you to create your own fundraising strategy.

1- What is a strategy?

A strategy is a plan designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. It’s an agreed direction with a set of coherent actions, which take into account the resources of your organization, the complexity of your external environment, as well as your goals in order to define and plan actions allowing you to obtain funds for your organization. It can be specific or general: a fundraising strategy to generate income, or sub-strategy such as a foundation strategy, or a major donor strategy.

2- Why should I have a strategy?

It is possible to do fundraising without a proper strategy and most organizations actually do. However, as stated in a fundraising guide developed by I .G . Advisors in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, “there are serious drawbacks to operating without an articulated and agreed approach, such as:

  • CONFUSION: it’s difficult to coordinate a group of people towards a goal, and effectively delegate activities, without a clear strategy or plan. People may be confused about the best way to spend their time, or focus their efforts.
  • UNAWARENESS: if you are not setting and checking your progress against specific strategic goals, you may not be aware of problems that are keeping you from moving forward. You may also be unable to spot potential opportunities, if you do not spend time articulating your priorities.
  • DISTRACTIONS: without a specific set of goals to focus on, it’s very easy to get pulled in too many directions, and move from idea to idea, and project to project, without making real progress.
  • EXPENSE: time is money, and so spending a lot of it can be expensive – but so can spending money on ideas and projects that aren’t strategic, or don’t provide a good return on your investment.
  • OVERWHELM: without a strategy to help you prioritize opportunities and activities, often there can be a feeling of the work ‘never being done’, or there is always too much to do at once.
  • UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: part of developing a strategy is deciding what you want to achieve, and balancing that with what is possible to achieve. Not engaging with that process can lead you, your leadership, or your Board to have unrealistic expectations.
  • REACTIVITY: without a strategy to support targeted, proactive fundraising activities, you are likely to always be reacting to the most urgent things, with a feeling of ‘firefighting’. This does not support long-term thinking.”

3- What should I consider to draft a strategy?

Fundraising is at the heart of your organization. It is essential to develop and grow your organization, and similarly, it relies a lot on your programmes, governance structure, positioning, communication and so on to be efficient. Below are the elements you should consider to create your fundraising strategy:

a. General analysis of your organization

Assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis) as the first step to better prioritize fundraising targets. Look closely at your programmes, governance structure and team, current fundraising actions and your tools and processes. This exercise may also help you identify your low-hanging fruits.

b. Definition of your financial objective

Validate the global financial objective and timeframe. To do so, look at your costs, what would be needed for you to grow in the coming years in terms of overhead costs and programs or activities. This step is a huge dive into numbers. Make sure you have access to the right information to do this exercise.

c. Prioritization of your fundraising targets

List your fundraising targets: foundations; corporations; public funds; multilateral funds; high-networth individuals; general public; or ad hoc such as sales of services. 

Analyze each of them by considering:

  • their profile;
  • where to find them;
  • who can help;
  • what it implies to work with them;
  • how to cultivate, solicit, steward;
  • what might be their interest.

Now that you have a better overview, prioritize the ones with higher potential of success and drop the ones that do not seem to align with your organization. Depending on the size of your organization and your fundraising team, it might be important to make a choice. 

d. Donor’s journey

Better understand your donors and define how to foster commitment by thinking about:

  • your donor motivations: why would they give to you?
  • your donor offering: what are your assets?
  • your unique value proposition

e. Leverages

Map your network and list potential visibility opportunities as ways to leverage fundraising efforts.

Conclusion

Once your fundraising strategy is created for the next 3-5 years, it is much easier to develop a concrete action plan over the coming year, thinking about key actions, but also roles and responsibilities within the team. Keep in mind that this is a testing-adapting-redrafting exercise, but that’s also how you will learn what works best for your organization. After a year, you should take time to assess and adapt your strategy if needed. Good luck !


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