The best way to start a fundraising strategy is through a short workshop – by bringing together everyone who has an interest in achieving the goal you want to fundraise for, and following a process to articulate what is needed, identify what strengths exist and discuss what options should be prioritised.
This approach is the best because the discussion is useful in assessing which ideas are the most practical and most likely to raise money, and because it involves everyone. Successful fundraising draws on the strengths of everyone involved and the opportunities that those individuals may have access to. Also, getting everyone involved means you can try more things and it makes the tasks seem smaller, and therefore keeps it more practical and useful.
👁️🗨️ What does a good strategy look like?
A good strategy is practical and honest about what can be achieved, and is grounded in the reality of the context. A good strategy has to be your strategy – if it is not based on what you need, your strengths and your opportunities, it will not be effective. The output of the process can look however you like – a word document, a presentation, an email or some shared notes.
🔡 The easiest way to develop and present a fundraising strategy is to follow a simple template to ensure some key questions have been considered. This template will most likely cover the following aspects of planned activity: what, why, how, who and when.
Good fundraising strategies will include different types of fundraising, with different audiences. This increases your chances of success as well as developing a more sustainable approach.
A good fundraising strategy will go further than identifying the appropriate types of fundraising you could do and look at how they can fit together to help you achieve your targets. This will help you prioritise plans and decide where to invest your efforts.
🔺A fundraising pyramid, or pyramid of gifts is a good way to look at this. The pyramid is widest at the bottom where many people are taking part in fundraising that involves smaller individual contributions. For example, you may aim to secure 1 big gift from an individual for your project, 3 medium size grants and to get 150 people to take part in an event where they each give a small amount.
Structuring your thinking in this way allows you to make more specific, practical plans and develop specific targets – for example, how many people will you ask in order to secure one major gift? How long will this take? How are you going to go about it?
A good strategy will also go beyond the who, what and how of the fundraising and think about the skills and culture needed to make this work easy and sustainable. This involves thinking about your fundraising capacity and how you can support and build this. For example, how are all your different volunteer, staff and board members involved? Is their current contribution valued? Would they like to/could they give in other ways? Could they open up new opportunities? It is very common to overlook the opportunities closet to home!
Successful organisation often have a giving culture – where everyone has the opportunity to give and all contributions are valued. Engaging in this way helps promote a culture where everyone helps with fundraising, which in turn increases your fundraising success. People often find it easier to ask others for money or time when they are already donors themselves.
Successful fundraising also benefits from an honest appraisal of the skills needed for different activities. Many people new to fundraising struggle with making direct asks – that is, asking people for financial donations. Rather than ignoring this, make it part of your strategy and come up with resources or plans that address this. Role playing can be very useful, as can a clear case for support with defined funding needs or a menu of funding options.