Every non-profit, no matter how large or small, can meet full development potential for their fundraising plan by writing a fundraising plan. Fundraising plans provide organization to ensure proper strategies, deadlines, responsibilities for crucial tasks, and common understanding of key goals and objectives.
Writing a fool-proof fundraising plan can appear as a daunting task. Creating a strong development plan, however, is not as hard as it sounds. Here are four simple steps that each non-profit can follow for maximum effectiveness:
Step #1: Laying a foundation
Before you can hit the ground running, it’s important to lay a foundation for your development plan. Gathering information and doing some research is vital for a comprehensive understanding before beginning. Asking basic questions and finding the answers before bringing ideas and plans to multiple people helps ensure a smoother planning process. Here are a couple of questions to consider: How has your organization raised money in the past? What tactics and events have succeeded? What tactics and events have failed? How many donors do you have, and at what levels of consistency? How many prospects do you have?How much time have you devoted to finding more prospects?
Step #2: Presenting the Proposal and Building Conesus
A non-profit organization can only exist with support from multiple, indispensable groups such as the organization’s staff, board members, key donors, and advisers. Understanding the opinions and advice of such key stakeholders provides a vision for your efforts for the coming year. Setting up a series of meetings with each group that supports your non-profit better ensures a larger consensus and direction.
Step #3: First Draft of Plan
After your research and stakeholder meetings are complete, beginning to write the plan comes next. Having one person write the first draft of the plan eliminates ineffective and time-consuming team-effort plans that can become disjointed. Writing the first draft of the plan can vary between 1-3 weeks, conditional to the size and complexity of the organization in question. Once the plan is written, however, the whole team can strengthen and refine the plan.
Step #4: Building Support
Upon completion of the plan, you can finally start building support of the plan from staff, board members, and key donors. Formal approval from board of directors through a vote puts the board on the record as supporting the initiatives contained in the plan. Furthermore, this more safely secures the board’s support when it comes time for your staff to seek help with fundraising.
By following these four steps your organization will not only assure your new fundraising plan touches all the bases, but that it will also receive the maximum amount of effective input from as many stakeholders as possible. The end result will be a sound plan with a wide-ranging support inside your non-profit. Contact Charity Fundraising to learn more!
