A good fundraising plan serves as your roadmap for the year.

While writing a fundraising plan may seem overwhelming and you may not know where to begin or what needs to be included, it doesn’t need to be complicated.

If you’ve never created a fundraising plan before or if you want to refine or restructure a fundraising plan, begin by asking yourself four questions:

Once you’ve taken the high-level overview, get more specific.

Reflect on the last year. Take time to review your fundraising activities and results from your previous year’s efforts. Dive into your donor management system and get ready to analyze your data.

Consider the questions:

Raised $10,000 from 120 donors through two direct mail campaigns, $3,000 from 60 donors during summer online campaign, and $20,000 from four major donor solicitations.

Conducted our first online campaign and found three new major donors.

Still struggling to start a monthly giving program, but there’s not enough time for meetings with donors.

Gather your leadership (executive director, board, development director, senior leaders).

During this gathering, determine your anticipated overall expenses and how much funding is needed to support operations. It’s important to get everyone on the same page when it comes to expenses so that you avoid unrealistic fundraising expectations and goals.

Be prepared to talk about the context of your current and previous fiscal years to determine how to factor in fundraising trends you’ve experienced. Include review of one-off events, bequests, or other anomalies that may not be sustainable or are not guaranteed future sources of funding.

Here are questions you should ask during this meeting with senior leadership:

In addition to talking about expenses, sit down with appropriate staff members and discuss expected income.

Understanding what’s expected through committed sources will help you better calculate your fundraising goal.

After you’ve had these discussions, you should be able to calculate your goal for the year:

The total projected expenses minus expected income becomes your fiscal year’s “left to raise” fundraising goal. If you can, think about adding up to 10% over that goal to encourage growth and stronger sustainability. This helps you start to grow a financial cushion for your organization.

Between monthly Board meetings, grant reporting, and the fiscal accountability functions nonprofits are mandated to perform, taking additional time to review your budgets and accounts prior to launching your annual fundraising plan may seem redundant.

Nevertheless, it is a crucial step for the Board and organizational leadership to provide a realistic perspective of what budgetary shortfalls or surpluses mean relative to your Mission, operations, comprehensive strategic plan, and current and future capacity building.

Clear knowledge of your organization’s fiscal status will empower your organization at various critical phases as you further develop and execute the annual campaign.

The fiscal analysis should answer the following questions:

Now that you have a goal in mind, analyze your fundraising results from the current and past four fiscal years. Also review costs associated with fundraising activities.

Learn and grow from what you know now. Asking yourself these questions gives you an opportunity for self-reflection and to be honest with how well you’ve done in the past:

It’s important to get a broader philanthropic view since you are not fundraising in a vacuum.

Don’t worry about spending too much time finding the exact answers to these questions. You want to have more of a general sense of how donors have behaved and what it can mean for your organization.

Fundraising success isn’t just about meeting your goal. It’s about understanding how and where to focus efforts to grow your current universe of donors and prospects.

In addition to revenue from each of these main groups, also consider:

Understanding how (and where) funds have been raised in the past helps you map out a solid plan to build your fundraising goals and strategies this year.

It’s time to put together your roadmap! Your roadmap will be the one place that stores your financial and non-monetary goals and the tactics to reach those goals.

Start the plan by providing a snapshot of how much you need to raise broken down by the fundraising activities you have been analyzing. Who will you target with these campaigns and when will they launch? How much will each of these activities cost?

At the end of the year, most organizations judge their success by one question: Did we meet our budget goal?

But growing future giving means investing in activities that may not generate revenue now but will make a difference in the future. That’s why it’s important to ask yourself: What three things do I want to make sure happen this year because of my organization’s fundraising plan?

Example Focus Areas

To continue to grow your individual donor revenue, your plan should include specific tactics to attract, renew, and upgrade donors.

Many organizations have consistent strategies to renew existing donors, but don’t spend time discovering how to attract new donors or upgrade existing donors. Doing all three can significantly increase the amount you raise year after year.

Examples

What do you want to accomplish through planned fundraising activities this year? Think beyond dollars raised. Your goals may include having a certain number of new donors or encouraging more Board involvement.

Don’t forget to develop goals that are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound.

Examples

In addition to financial goals, what other quantitative goals will you set that will strengthen your fundraising? Think about broader fundraising growth and improvements.

Examples

After you’ve set the bigger picture, you can focus on the specifics for each of your non-monetary goals by setting objectives, strategies, and creating an action plan to launch these ideas.

Articulate measurable objectives that will give an idea of what needs to be done to achieve the overarching goals you set forth.

Here are some examples:

Strategies are the actual actions you will take to reach your objectives. There can be multiple strategies under each objective.

Examples

What will you do to engage donors this year and how much will you need to spend to be successful? Consider direct mail, email, and online fundraising costs. What resources did you use to get grant proposals submitted?

Be sure to look at your response rates from direct mail and online campaigns. What worked well and what didn’t? It’s helpful to review what performed in past years and what didn’t so you can make changes to what you spend and have the budget to test new strategies to increase revenue this year.

For each activity, outline the projected gross income and subtract all expenses, including staff time, consultants, and all design, printing, postage, travel, food and other costs.

Start assigning roles and responsibilities to bring your strategies to life. Include a checklist of steps that will take place, and mini calendar for those actions.

Here’s a sample draft of what your action plan might look like for getting a peer giving platform set up before Giving Tuesday.

Increase online giving at year-end by 10%

Social Fundraising campaign during Giving Tuesday

Whether you use Google, Basecamp, or a paper calendar, figure out how are going to space out your plans over the next year.

Be sure to plan your activities around vacations, programmatic events, and potential busy times for the organization.

Examples

Lots of us make resolutions in our personal lives, but what about fundraising resolutions?

Figure out what you need to be successful this year. Do you need an accountability partner? An hour on your calendar every week to check in on the plan - or make phone calls to donors? A quarterly check-in with your team to evaluate your progress?

Whatever it is, set it up now and stick to it!

Examples

Fundraising progress should be part of every board meeting and a regular discussion with staff. Being open about progress helps recognize campaigns that fell short of their goal early enough so you can brainstorm ways to make up the difference.

Now that you have a plan in place, it’s time to look at what you can do to keep the giving momentum going by investing in cultivation and stewardship.

Cultivation lays the groundwork for the future by adding prospects to your donor base and inviting them to become active donors to your organization.

Stewardship (or donor relations) strengthens relationships with current board members, donors, volunteers, and other friends to build a greater understanding of how they can help you achieve your mission.

When it comes to cultivation and stewardship, you are most likely already doing it without defining these activities in that way: Annual reports, newsletters, special webinars hosted by your key program leadership, holiday and birthday cards are all examples of ways to leverage communications to enhance your relationships with your donors.