I often remind people of the definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. What are you going to do differently down the road to try to raise more money for your cause?
You must have a development plan for your nonprofit. And if you already have one, you should take the time to reevaluate and update it every year.
Creating a development plan can be tedious, so I’ve boiled it down to the most basic steps necessary. Creating a highly effective plan isn’t exactly easy, but it doesn’t have to be overly complicated either. Too many details and you won’t follow it. Too basic and it won’t really work.
With that in mind, we’re going to focus on four key steps and a simple series of questions to help you complete each step.
Creating a Fundraising Development Plan in 4 Steps
There are four essential components to create an effective development plan — one that will improve your ongoing fundraising efforts.
1. Start by Creating a Baseline
Analyze what you’ve done in the past. What sort of things did you do over the course of the past year to raise money for your cause?
- Grants – How many grants did you apply for, and receive? Which were worth the effort and which weren’t?
- Events – How many fundraising events did you have? How much did they cost and how much did they raise? How much time and effort did they take? Are there any you should eliminate? Any you should expand?
- Mailings – How many bulk mailings did you send, both traditional and electronic? How many people did each solicitation reach? How many responses did you get from each mailing? What was the average gift size?
- Asks – How many individuals did you solicit in a personal way (i.e., raising major gifts)? How many gifts did you get? Did people give what you asked for? On average, did they give more or less?
2. Next, Consider New Goals
After looking at what you’ve done in the past, you’ll want to create some new goals. Answer the following questions:
- How much money do you want / need to raise?
- What resources will you need to raise that amount?
- What’s the gap between the amount you’re currently raising and how much you want / need to raise?
- What, specifically, are you raising they money for?
3. Determine What Has to Change
Figure out what’s been working versus what you need to change. Consider the following:
- Will you have the same events? What changes will you make?
- What new foundations can you apply to? Are there any you should not apply to again? How will you increase the likelihood that you will get new grants or the same ones again?
- How many individuals can you solicit and who are they? What will you do to cultivate, solicit, and steward them?
- How will your direct mail / email efforts change or adapt?
- Will you provide a board retreat and development training for board members?
4. Develop and Write Up Your Plan
Now it’s time to write up your plan. This doesn’t have to be a beautiful, perfect document. Just get down all the finer points by following these 5 steps:
- First, write down your goals (based on #2 and #3 above).
- Under each goal, put the action steps necessary to achieve that goal.
- Next, note down who’s responsible for each action step.
- Consider the costs of each action step and translate that into a simple budget.
- Organize your action steps into a straightforward timeline.
It really is that simple. There’s no need to make it more complicated than that.
Achieving the Best Results for Your Fundraising
Remember the definition of insanity from above? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So make sure you’re trying something new and taking a few risks. Commit to trying at least one new program, service, or technology. You could discover something that has a big positive impact on your overall results.
Creating an effective development plan is one of the most crucial and challenging aspects of fundraising. But it’s absolutely worth taking the time to do. Think about it this way — the difference between a good development plan and a great development plan can be tens of thousands of dollars in donations.
If you have any questions, share them in the comments below. I’m always happy to help.
Amy, your helpfulness just keeps on coming – thank you! Our development team is working on this right now – we are all either fairly new or brand new to the organization, and yet we have a relatively strong donor history of regular giving but it has not been well stewarded in the last couple of years – so we are encouraged that we will be able to create a fruitful plan!
Thank you for sharing this valuable information. I am hoping to get a job as the development director for a nonprofit that has only received funding from individual donors and fees for training people to become life coaches to implement the organization’s programs internationally. My experience is primarily in nonprofit management and getting grant writing. I’m wanting to learn about the other aspects of development. This was very helpful and easy to understand. I look forward to checking out your website in detail.