A fundraising strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a goal. More specifically, it is an outline of your current financial and funding solution and will aid you to clarify the amount of money that is needed, who will raise it, how it will be raised, and when it is needed.
The benefit of having a fundraising strategy is that it allows you to plan your long term fundraising goals, and enables staff and stake-holders to engage with the fundraising process.
Steps To Creating a Fundraising Strategy:
1. Know what your goal is.
Determine your overall financial need to support your organization annually. Your strategy should include details on who your existing donors are, and some goals to accomplish to increase your annual fundraising support.
2. Know who your donors are:
- Number of Individual Donors you already have (major and small)
- Existing Foundations and Corporations that have supported you in the past.
- Any Government Grants you have received in the past.
Other Considerations
- How many new individual donors do you need to reach your goal?
- How many new Foundation or Corporate Grants do you need to reach your goal?
3. How are you going to reach your donors?
- Grant Applications
- Direct Mail
- Sponsorship
- Telephone
- Face to Face
- Media
- E-Communications
- Peer-To-Peer Fundraising
- Volunteer Opportunities
- Events
- Social Networking
4. Determine who is responsible for fundraising
- Fundraising / Development Department (if you are lucky)
- Trustees and Board Members
- Top Management
- Program Staff
- Consultants
- Volunteers
- Advocates
- Members
5. Determine your time-lines and deadlines
Each organization will have a different time-line and different deadlines. It is important to set out your annual schedule and try to complete everything during its given time-line. The majority of organizations tend to begin approaching Foundations and Corporations in the first quarter of the year - however be sure to check deadlines prior to submitting applications. Developing your individual donor list should be an ongoing process and should utilize a variety of both offline and online methods including direct mail, e-newsletters, blogs, and social networking.
Why do you need to have a fundraising strategy?
The fundraising strategy provides a long term plan which can be followed and measured. It helps you to define roles and responsibilities, and involves and engages stake-holders. Remember - this is a flexible plan and it can be revisited.
Pinc Tips for Tag: Online Fundraising
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Best Practices for Effective Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
2009-09-30 14:45:18
1. Integrate peer-to-peer fundraising into your current fundraising strategies. Inventory your current communications tactics (email, physical mailers, website, etc.) and examine the messaging. Has it been watered down to reach many different audiences? Through peer-to-peer campaigns, you maintain the core messaging but enable your donors to personalize the message for their own networking and recruitment efforts.
Reference http://www.advsol.com
2. Introduce online events to the list of ways a donor can help. A-thon-based events can be launched and managed online far quicker, with less overhead cost, than multi-location physical events. Peer-to-peer Internet-based events eliminate the need to physically go to an event, allowing participation from across the globe, right from their computers.
3. Identify campaign ‘champions’ and give them the tools to rapidly expand the donor network. Take the time to find your top supporters, reach out to them first and show them how to use peer-to-peer tools. Once they understand how easy it is for them to create their own personalized campaign website, carrying their own messaging, they will be able to reach out to their networks far quicker, and with no added costs.
4. Understand, motivate and thank your donors. In peer-to-peer fundraising, you can easily focus on keeping your participants involved in the campaign by quickly sending them personalized automated emails that provide fundraising tips, solicitation reminders, encouragement and your gratitude. Traditional means of communicating with donors are costly, time intensive and slow.
5. Create friendly competition and build individual and team incentives into your campaigns. Create accurate, real-time responsive leader boards that allow campaign champions to see how their fundraising efforts stack up against fellow champions. Offer prizes to the top fundraisers and top teams. Encourage team captains to motivate their team members and offer them easy ways of communicating within their team.
6. Reduce unnecessary administrative efforts from each campaign. Peer-to-peer tools automate many administrative functions of fundraising programs. Donor communications becomes automated, personalized donor websites can be created by the donors themselves, tax records and receipts are automatically generated and distributed. By using online-based events, the costs and coordination associated with physical venues is eliminated.
7. Automate your donor acquisition strategy. Peer-to-peer tools that fully integrate with your donor management systems will allow you to capture new donor information and donation habits. By allowing your donors to create their own online networks, all donors that interact with those personalized websites can be captured, collecting money and expanding your database at the same time.
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Reference http://www.advsol.com
2. Introduce online events to the list of ways a donor can help. A-thon-based events can be launched and managed online far quicker, with less overhead cost, than multi-location physical events. Peer-to-peer Internet-based events eliminate the need to physically go to an event, allowing participation from across the globe, right from their computers.
3. Identify campaign ‘champions’ and give them the tools to rapidly expand the donor network. Take the time to find your top supporters, reach out to them first and show them how to use peer-to-peer tools. Once they understand how easy it is for them to create their own personalized campaign website, carrying their own messaging, they will be able to reach out to their networks far quicker, and with no added costs.
4. Understand, motivate and thank your donors. In peer-to-peer fundraising, you can easily focus on keeping your participants involved in the campaign by quickly sending them personalized automated emails that provide fundraising tips, solicitation reminders, encouragement and your gratitude. Traditional means of communicating with donors are costly, time intensive and slow.
5. Create friendly competition and build individual and team incentives into your campaigns. Create accurate, real-time responsive leader boards that allow campaign champions to see how their fundraising efforts stack up against fellow champions. Offer prizes to the top fundraisers and top teams. Encourage team captains to motivate their team members and offer them easy ways of communicating within their team.
6. Reduce unnecessary administrative efforts from each campaign. Peer-to-peer tools automate many administrative functions of fundraising programs. Donor communications becomes automated, personalized donor websites can be created by the donors themselves, tax records and receipts are automatically generated and distributed. By using online-based events, the costs and coordination associated with physical venues is eliminated.
7. Automate your donor acquisition strategy. Peer-to-peer tools that fully integrate with your donor management systems will allow you to capture new donor information and donation habits. By allowing your donors to create their own online networks, all donors that interact with those personalized websites can be captured, collecting money and expanding your database at the same time.
6 Most Miserable Mistakes Of Social Marketing
2009-09-23 11:44:06
Many nonprofits are dabbling in social media, and that’s a good thing. It’s wise for nonprofits to engage with potential supporters and donors where they congregate online, rather than waiting for them to come to us. According to NTEN, Common Knowledge and ThePort Network, 74 percent of nonprofits have a Facebook presence and four-fifths of nonprofits are committing at least one-quarter of a full-time staff person to their social networking efforts. More than half of nonprofits intend to increase social networking project staffing over the next 12 months. All good news.
Now the bad news. We don’t always do it right. Here are the six most common – and egregious – errors we make:
1. We fear losing control. Don’t! We lost control of our message and our brand a long, long time ago. If you don’t believe me, search online for all the things people are saying about you. You can ignore those conversations (not recommended) or engage with them.
2. We think social networking is a way to get our message out. Nope. It’s not a message delivery vehicle. It’s a way to engage in authentic, sincere and open conversation with supporters.
3. We see dollar signs. While social networking can be a way to raise money, that should not be the reason for doing it. For example, Facebook is primarily tool for interacting and engaging with a community—not necessarily a fundraising silver bullet.
4. We fail to set small, achievable goals. If you’re going to start an initiative, make it a small one with clear goals so you know how to measure success.
5. We forget to set some ground rules. Don’t go Wild West! Set a social media policy for your organization, so it’s clear how to respond to what you’re hearing - and what types of initiatives have internal support. Better to have shared rules than to freak out when your colleague puts a snarky remark on someone’s blog.
6. We give up when we make mistakes. Don’t worry, that’s part of learning. Share and learn from your missteps. There is no shame in mistakes if they make you smarter.
Credit to Katya Andresen http://www.casefoundation.org/blog/6-most-miserable-mistakes-social-marketing
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Now the bad news. We don’t always do it right. Here are the six most common – and egregious – errors we make:
1. We fear losing control. Don’t! We lost control of our message and our brand a long, long time ago. If you don’t believe me, search online for all the things people are saying about you. You can ignore those conversations (not recommended) or engage with them.
2. We think social networking is a way to get our message out. Nope. It’s not a message delivery vehicle. It’s a way to engage in authentic, sincere and open conversation with supporters.
3. We see dollar signs. While social networking can be a way to raise money, that should not be the reason for doing it. For example, Facebook is primarily tool for interacting and engaging with a community—not necessarily a fundraising silver bullet.
4. We fail to set small, achievable goals. If you’re going to start an initiative, make it a small one with clear goals so you know how to measure success.
5. We forget to set some ground rules. Don’t go Wild West! Set a social media policy for your organization, so it’s clear how to respond to what you’re hearing - and what types of initiatives have internal support. Better to have shared rules than to freak out when your colleague puts a snarky remark on someone’s blog.
6. We give up when we make mistakes. Don’t worry, that’s part of learning. Share and learn from your missteps. There is no shame in mistakes if they make you smarter.
Credit to Katya Andresen http://www.casefoundation.org/blog/6-most-miserable-mistakes-social-marketing
Getting Started With Your End Of Year Campaigns
2009-08-19 12:17:53
The end of summer is quickly approaching, and as a fundraiser you should probably be thinking about your end of year fundraising plans.
If you have not yet started here are a few suggestions on what you should be getting started with now to ensure you get the most from your end of year online fundraising efforts.
1. Any supporters who are added to your list this fall will be your donors this winter. Increase your efforts to grow your email subscribers, as well as the size of other lists you be using during your end of year campaigns.
2. Put on your creative hats! The sooner you know what your end of year fundraising campaign is going to be, the sooner you can begin generating relevant content, generating ideas, and highlighting your organizations most pertinent accomplishments.
3. Take a look at what you did last year. Determine what worked, and whether it will work again this year. Consider what didn’t work and why, and come up with some new ideas and solutions.
4. Get started! Come up with some ideas and quick drafts to give your campaign a backbone moving forward.
5. Plan backwards. We know that the deadline is December 31st. Take some steps to assess what needs to be accomplished, plot tasks along a timeline at realistic intervals to determine what point you need to start your campaign.
6. Figure out what you can get ready now, regardless of whether you have a confirmed plan in mind. If you want to create a holiday related donation page, redesign an email template, or tweak your homepage – now is the time to begin planning what it will look like, who is going to create it, and how. Your best ideas won’t get you much if you cannot complete them because the technical components did not come together in time.
If you are stuck on where to go from here, please contact pincgiving at 1-888-683-7462 or email diana@pincgiving.com to discuss how we can help you plan and implement your end of year campaigns!
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If you have not yet started here are a few suggestions on what you should be getting started with now to ensure you get the most from your end of year online fundraising efforts.
1. Any supporters who are added to your list this fall will be your donors this winter. Increase your efforts to grow your email subscribers, as well as the size of other lists you be using during your end of year campaigns.
2. Put on your creative hats! The sooner you know what your end of year fundraising campaign is going to be, the sooner you can begin generating relevant content, generating ideas, and highlighting your organizations most pertinent accomplishments.
3. Take a look at what you did last year. Determine what worked, and whether it will work again this year. Consider what didn’t work and why, and come up with some new ideas and solutions.
4. Get started! Come up with some ideas and quick drafts to give your campaign a backbone moving forward.
5. Plan backwards. We know that the deadline is December 31st. Take some steps to assess what needs to be accomplished, plot tasks along a timeline at realistic intervals to determine what point you need to start your campaign.
6. Figure out what you can get ready now, regardless of whether you have a confirmed plan in mind. If you want to create a holiday related donation page, redesign an email template, or tweak your homepage – now is the time to begin planning what it will look like, who is going to create it, and how. Your best ideas won’t get you much if you cannot complete them because the technical components did not come together in time.
If you are stuck on where to go from here, please contact pincgiving at 1-888-683-7462 or email diana@pincgiving.com to discuss how we can help you plan and implement your end of year campaigns!
Non Techie Search Engine Optimization Tips
2009-06-24 11:48:04
As you browse through online advice posts and websites trying to figure out how to get a higher SEO ranking you probably have come across terms like robots, metatags, or spiders – and have no idea what that means. Here are a few suggestions on how you can improve your website’s SEO ranking without adding tags and key words, or worrying about getting penalized by search engines for “keyword spamming” or “stuffing”. Leave that to the professionals!
Link to other sites – Search engines place great importance on links to other sites. The more sites that link to yours, the more important search engines consider your site to be. Do you have a facebook or Ning account? Twitter? Be sure to include your website link, and when making comments or posting updates, be sure to direct viewers back to your website via a link to the home page, or a link on your site directly relevant to the discussion. Linking to relevant content is a must - a good guide to follow would be not to link to any site which does not contain useful information or relevant content. More info about “bad neighborhoods” can be found here: http://www.v7n.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11376
Newsletters – Newsletter publishers like Icontact or ConstantContact offer the option to archive your newsletter online. These links stay live often for many years in the archive – again, be sure to link to others, and link back to your own website in your newsletter content. Generally, you are also offered the option to include “Tags” before you publish to the community online – be sure that these tags are relevant to your newsletter content, and do link back to your own website.
Article exchanges - Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article about fundraising with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten online fundraising tips, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.
Blog Postings – If you have a blog already – great – here are some tips. If you don’t – start one. http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm. Blog commenting and participation is a significant way to improve SEO rankings – read why. http://www.costpernews.com/archives/why-blog-commenting-is-time-well-spent/
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Link to other sites – Search engines place great importance on links to other sites. The more sites that link to yours, the more important search engines consider your site to be. Do you have a facebook or Ning account? Twitter? Be sure to include your website link, and when making comments or posting updates, be sure to direct viewers back to your website via a link to the home page, or a link on your site directly relevant to the discussion. Linking to relevant content is a must - a good guide to follow would be not to link to any site which does not contain useful information or relevant content. More info about “bad neighborhoods” can be found here: http://www.v7n.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11376
Newsletters – Newsletter publishers like Icontact or ConstantContact offer the option to archive your newsletter online. These links stay live often for many years in the archive – again, be sure to link to others, and link back to your own website in your newsletter content. Generally, you are also offered the option to include “Tags” before you publish to the community online – be sure that these tags are relevant to your newsletter content, and do link back to your own website.
Article exchanges - Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article about fundraising with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten online fundraising tips, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.
Blog Postings – If you have a blog already – great – here are some tips. If you don’t – start one. http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm. Blog commenting and participation is a significant way to improve SEO rankings – read why. http://www.costpernews.com/archives/why-blog-commenting-is-time-well-spent/