Expert fundraising coach Pamela Grow has partnered with DonorPerfect, a leading provider of fundraising software, to create Your 2022 Fundraising Planner. In this free resource, Grow outlines how to organize your organization’s annual plan by funding source, strategy, cost, and anticipated income. No more “tripping over dollars to pick up pennies,” she says.
Goal-setting
For fundraising success, Grow recommends nonprofit organizations should set a goal, make a plan to achieve it, then work the plan. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Yet, a lack of clarity is one of the biggest causes of waste and procrastination in the nonprofit sector,” Grow says. She notes that there is a powerful relationship between the degree of formality in fundraising planning - regarding your relationship with your donors - and all measures of fundraising performance.
Plan-mapping
To start planning, Grow recommends organizations divide their funding strategies into individual giving, monthly giving, board giving, events, private foundations, grants, and business donors. She also recommends that organizations consider their historical data and unique fundraising targets while mapping out their annual objectives. For example, one might set out to double their small monthly donor membership over 2021 through an email campaign.
Collaboration
“Collaborate with your team to ask the hard questions and propose solutions,” she says. “Remember, you’ll want to keep your plan front and center always. Modify it as needed. When an opportunity falls into your lap, consider how it fits into your plan and if it truly is an opportunity. Time is money.”
Leadership
Grow stresses the importance of nonprofit leadership buy-in when it comes to online fundraising and multichannel communication. “Your leadership needs to understand that all the studies indicate that multichannel campaigns are key to growing your donor base. An investment in direct mail and donor care will yield solid returns,” she explains.
“That said, strong online fundraising requires a strong system. If you’re cobbling together too many systems, you won’t be serving your donors or your organization well. Do you have a donor database? Does your website need to be updated? Will you be making any new hires? Real fundraising, the sustainable kind, requires investment.”
Non-financial goals
Above all else, ask yourself: is your organization’s culture a healthy one? In Your 2022 Fundraising Planner, Pamela Grow and DonorPerfect encourage nonprofits to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in their fundraising infrastructure - this includes staff, board, partners, and donors. To facilitate these changes, Grow urges fundraisers to create an action plan with documented steps to get there.
Download Your 2022 Fundraising Planner
Named one of the 50 Most Influential Fundraisers by Civil Society magazine, Pamela Grow (she/her) is a veteran fundraiser with more than 20 years of coaching experience. She is the author of Simple Development Systems: Successful Fundraising for the One-Person Shop; publisher of The Grow Report, a weekly e-newsletter for small shop fundraisers; and her Basics & More online classes have trained over 8,000 nonprofits all over the world.
