Pulling Your Data Together to Develop a Fundraising Plan

Welcome to article four in this five article series on the Importance of Data Assessments in a COVID Economy. This month, I’ll talk to you about analyzing your data and using it to develop a plan. If you haven’t already, catch up by reading the first three articles in this series starting with, “The Development Assessment and why it’s vital to fundraising planning.”

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You’ve made it to article four in this series on developing a data assessment, so by now you know how strongly I feel about the need for data assessments in this post-COVID economy. There are just a few more steps you need to take to develop your final fundraising plan.

First, let’s recap. At this point, you’ve looked at 3-5 years of donor data and evaluated each of your donor categories - individuals, corporations, and foundations – and determined which segment provided you with the most support. 

By now you’ve also heard from stakeholders at all levels of the organization and gathered anecdotal data. They’ve told you about their personal experiences with the organization and where they see the most opportunity for growth.

All of this data should begin to coalesce to reveal identifiable trends and patterns. The goal at this stage is to recognize how your fundraising activities are performing year over year, and where there are opportunities for growth.

Analyze Your Data Findings

With all of your data collected, it’s finally time to analyze that data and develop your plan. This stage of the process is where a consultant can add a lot of value. A consultant walks in the door without any filters or prejudgments. That outside perspective makes it much more likely that they’ll identify both problem areas and opportunities for growth that you and your internal team may miss. They also come armed with a whole host of ideas, tactics and strategies from their experience supporting other organizations through the same process.

Here I’ve laid out everything you need to know to get to work on your organization’s fundraising plan. These are three steps I follow with every plan I develop. Here’s how to get started.

Step 1: Examine Your Weaknesses

This first step is the hardest. To effectively draft a fundraising plan that can help you grow and evolve as an organization, you need to first identify what’s not working and where there’s opportunity for improvement. As you examine your weaknesses, it’s important to listen and respond to what your stakeholders had to say. If they highlighted weak areas it means those areas are detrimental enough to shape the community’s perception of your organization. That’s a big deal and it needs to be addressed first. 

It can be difficult to examine your shortcomings. Doing this uncomfortable work, though, is the only way to create real, effective change that ultimately increases donor support and fundraising dollars.

Once you identify your weaknesses, develop tactics to address those areas and prioritize them for implementation. For example, you may notice multiple anecdotal data points from stakeholders reporting that they’d like to see more frequent updates from the organization. In that case, a priority tactic would be to develop a more intentional communication schedule. This could be done through a newsletter, social media posts, direct donor outreach, or any other number of ways to get information into the hands of your donors.

2. Dig Deeper into Downward Trends

Look for potential downward trends that could suggest that certain fundraising activities are slipping. If the data shows that your annual fundraising event, for instance, raised less and less money each year for the past several years, you need to figure out why.

In the case of the annual event, there could be several reasons why the event isn’t generating the return it used to. The event may have become stale, perhaps you lost sponsors over the years, or maybe your event is now competing with another event around the same time.

For any activities that are no longer performing, you need to decide whether to fix them or retire them. Getting to the root cause of the downward trend is the first step in making that decision and ensuring the energy and effort you put into fundraising is giving you the biggest possible return.

3. Identify and Explore Opportunities for Growth

Once you’ve fully evaluated your existing activities, it’s time to use your data to identify new opportunities to help your organization grow. Then, put steps in place to implement them.

Here’s an example of how to use your data to make a strategic shift in your fundraising approach. Let’s say your data shows that a large portion of your donors make one time gifts between $0-$500 a year. From my experience, I can tell you that those one-time gift-givers are prime candidates to become monthly donors. The data justifies the implementation of a monthly giving program which will not only increase revenue from that pool of donors but also give you a more consistent and reliable base of funding each year.

Map Out Your Plan

It takes time and resources to grow a fundraising program. In the same way that strategic plans are multi-year, your fundraising plan should consider the next several years ahead as well. It’s important to note here that your fundraising plan fits within your organization’s strategic plan. They’re not one and the same. Your fundraising plan should reflect and provide funding for the activities in your strategic plan.

Strong fundraising plans are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound. I highly recommend designing your fundraising plan to be implemented over a two-to-three-year period. Set achievable goals against all activities with clear direction for everyone involved, including specific responsibilities and expectations. Set realistic annual fundraising goals during that time frame as well. A 10% fundraising increase in one year is realistic. A 25-30% increase is not!

Set Yourself Up for Success

The majority of organizations I meet with have already exceeded the capacity of their fundraising staff. That means that as fundraising activities are added to the plan, the resources needed to handle those activities – and do them well – must also be added.

No different than the way a first-time runner doesn’t set out to run a marathon without the proper training, gear and coach, your organization will not successfully raise more money without the additional staff, resources and budget to make those activities spectacular. Implementing new fundraising activities without the necessary resources is a quick way to set yourself up for failure.

Once you have a solid draft of your fundraising plan ready to go, it’s time to get everyone in the organization together and excited to help pull it off!

In the next article, I’ll share tips for how to get your board members and staff to buy in on your plan and give you the support you need to get moving.

Happy Planning!

Dani