How Do You Develop Fundraising Goals and Strategies?
How does your nonprofit develop fundraising goals and strategies for the year? For example, the board wants to set a goal of $1,000,000. This is a nice goal – all those beautiful zeroes – but how will it be achieved?
In order to “back into” a fundraising goal, it’s essential to develop a chart that demonstrates how many donors are required, and at what giving levels, to raise $1,000,000.
This chart would look something like this:
| Number of Donors | Gift Amount | Total |
| 1 | $250,000 | $250,000 |
| 2 | $100,000 | $200,000 |
| 4 | $50,000 | $200,000 |
| 10 | $25,000 | $250,000 |
| 40 | $1,000 | $40,000 |
| 70 | $500 | $35,000 |
| 100 | $250 | $25,000 |
| $1,000,000 |
The chart keeps your fundraising goal “reality-based”, and demonstrates how important it will be to secure those top gifts which are essential to the success of achieving the goal. If you don’t want to use Excel, draw a pine tree or a pyramid on the back of a napkin and fill it in from there.
The next step, and this is vital, is to put names to numbers, as in – who you will ask at each gift level in terms of individual donors, foundations, and other funding sources? And just as important, how many propsects will be needed at each level to secure the number of gifts you need, because not everyone is going to say “yes”!
| Number of Donors | Number of Prospects Needed | Names of Prospects | Gift Amount | Total |
| 1 | 3 | $250,000 | $250,000 | |
| 2 | 8 | $100,000 | $200,000 | |
| 4 | 15 | $50,000 | $200,000 | |
| 10 | 35 | $25,000 | $250,000 | |
| 40 | 85 | $1,000 | $40,000 | |
| 70 | 120 | $500 | $35,000 | |
| 100 | 250 | $250 | $25,000 | |
| 227 | 516 | $1,000,000 |
The last step is to capture this forecast in your nonprofit software. Why would you go to this much trouble and have this forecast live in Excel, then jump back and forth from your database to this report. With Affnetz, you can easily create user-defined-fields to track prospects and proposed gift amounts. This data is vital as you tailor communications and outreach to prospects, and involve fundraising volunteers. You can also generate automated reports throughout the year to track the progress of your fundraising efforts and share the reports with board members and fundraising volunteers.
Related Article: Boosting Nonprofit Revenue: Bring In More Dollars
Author
Mike is a recognized expert, thought leader, advisor and speaker in the Nonprofit world. Over the past four decades, Mike served as an Executive Director, COO, see more
