Your nonprofit’s annual fundraising plan serves as a clear roadmap for achieving your financial goals. Your plan also helps you with resource planning and allocation and measuring progress throughout the year.
So rather than treating each appeal as a one-off tactic in your fundraising efforts, create a thoughtful plan to turn disorganized fundraising activities into strategic donor cultivation, engagement and stewardship.
As you develop a fundraising plan, there are a few essential questions you must ask yourself to ensure your efforts align with donor expectations and your nonprofit’s objectives. Answering all of these question will lead to more fundraising success at your nonprofit.
1. Who are our donors?
Because fundraising success hinges on donors’ generosity, you must know who you’re appealing to before deciding how you’ll engage them. A targeted approach to audience engagement increases your chances of effectively stewarding donors and securing their loyal support.
However, your nonprofit likely isn’t new to conducting audience research. In your existing marketing efforts, you’ve probably already evaluated donor data, created relevant segments, and determined what messages resonate most with your audience.
Your annual fundraising plan should take this research a step further by creating segments specific to your fundraising efforts. These may include:
- Individuals: The opportunities are endless when it comes to engaging individual donors. This group can include supporters of various giving levels, such as major, mid-level, and small donors. Consider where you might encounter these donors and what types of campaigns would appeal to them.
- Corporations: Whether your nonprofit partners with a local business or has no connection with the for-profit world at all, corporations can be a powerful source of support for your organization. Corporate donors may offer sponsorships, matching gifts, or other programs to fulfill their corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments. Determine which companies might have shared values with your nonprofit, and plan tailored proposals to secure their support.
- Foundations: As Foundation Group explains, public charities must receive a significant portion of contributions from relatively small donors. As a result, nonprofits often focus on targeting individual donors with their outreach efforts instead of considering the various sources of potential support, like grants from private foundations. Be prepared to incorporate strategies for researching and applying for grants into your fundraising plan.
By considering potential sources of support more broadly, your fundraising plan can account for a variety of campaigns and capture as many contributions as possible.
2. What is our budget for fundraising activities?
Fundraising activities aren’t just about raising money—they also involve spending. Establishing a budget early on is essential to guide all financial decisions surrounding your various campaigns.
Determine your financial goals, including how much you plan to raise and how you’ll disperse those funds. Then, create a well-structured fundraising budget that accounts for the following:
- Marketing costs
- Event expenses
- Technology
To ensure you stick to the budget as the year progresses, implement an effective bookkeeping system. This will provide the data you need to evaluate your financial performance over time and adjust your strategy as needed.
3. When will we launch our campaigns?
Once you’ve identified your target audience and the resources available to solicit their support, it’s time to plan your campaigns. However, this step requires more than just deciding what types of events or campaigns to host.
When you launch your campaign at the right moment, you can maximize visibility and participation. That’s why year-end fundraising accounts for such a significant portion of nonprofit revenue.
Consider potential launch dates or timeframes for the various fundraisers you’ll host throughout the year. These could be based upon:
- Holidays and seasonal trends
- Key organizational dates, such as the anniversary of starting your nonprofit
- Local or national events
Break down each campaign into phases, and block out dates on your calendar accordingly to ensure your schedule accounts for all stages of the fundraising process. For example, let’s say you plan to host a live auction in April. You’ll need ample time to find a venue and procure auction items and additional time to promote the event and sell tickets later on.
Don’t forget to block out time for post-event activities, such as thanking donors and collecting participant feedback. As eCardWidget explains, sending a donor thank-you message within 72 hours of your fundraiser’s conclusion is crucial to show your genuine appreciation. This means you’ll need to have a thank-you message template on standby and enough time to prepare it.
4. Where can we reach our donors most effectively?
As a nonprofit professional, you already know that different platforms offer unique opportunities to engage various audiences. Just like your existing marketing efforts, you’ll need to choose channels strategically through which you can engage your audience.
However, beyond simply choosing channels for your content, you’ll need to think about where your potential donors exist in those channels.
For example, let’s say you want to engage individual donors on social media. Instagram is a popular social media platform that you might incorporate into your strategy. Within the platform, users can interact with posts from accounts they follow, posts recommended by the platform, stories, and reels. This means your nonprofit won’t reach its audience with a story if potential donors are only engaging with reels or don’t follow your organization’s account.
To market your fundraisers well, assign different audiences to each campaign, and determine which platforms and features will engage them best. Remember to align your marketing efforts with your fundraising calendar by leaving yourself plenty of time to promote the event or campaign before it begins.
5. How will we communicate our mission and impact to donors?
Your annual fundraising plan should account for every detail of your future fundraising activities, but the most important element it must include is your mission. After all, your nonprofit’s mission is part of what makes it a 501(c)(3) organization and allows you to maintain tax-exempt status.
Decide how you’ll incorporate your mission and impact into your fundraising activities. This should include:
- The message: While your marketing team may already be familiar with storytelling techniques and the power of visual elements, it never hurts to evaluate your brand messaging to ensure it is strength-based and aligns with your nonprofit’s priorities. When creating your annual fundraising plan, identify any themes or messages you want to focus on for the year, and create guidelines for communicating them.
- The numbers: Compile a list of data points and statistics that have guided your fundraising plan thus far. For example, perhaps an animal shelter would set a fundraising goal based on the organization’s need for a new facility. Or, an increase in the community’s cat population might lead the shelter to fundraise for its spay and neuter program. Sharing industry statistics and organizational data can help emphasize to donors that your mission is crucial.
- The timing: Plan to share snippets of your strategic plan or detailed impact reports at specific points in your annual fundraising calendar. For example, establish a cadence for sharing impact reports after the conclusion of a campaign. This will allow you to draw a direct connection between your donors’ involvement and the actions your nonprofit took with their help.
Reflecting on your organization’s mission can also help guide the specifics of your fundraising plan, like how to allocate resources in a way that best serves your nonprofit’s beneficiaries (who we refer to as constituents).
Asking the right questions is the key to creating an effective annual fundraising plan. The answers to these questions will provide a structured approach to fundraising that results in improved fundraising outcomes.
