Ten Steps to Fundraising Success
by Mal Warwick and Stephen Hitchcock

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Before You Take Your First Step, Please Read This Introduction

 

If somebody is talking about fundraising but not mentioning money, then it's not really fundraising. But if money is all they're talking about, then it's not fundraising either.

 

Fundraising is not just about money. It's best understood from a broader perspective as resource development. Approached from that vantage point, fundraising is about securing the resources you need -- at the right time and the right place -- to achieve your organization's mission.

 

The premise that informs this workbook is that simply raising the most money or having the lowest possible percentage of fundraising costs is not necessarily successful fundraising.

 

Even the more sophisticated criterion for success -- net contributed income -- is an inadequate yardstick for evaluating your development programs. Rather, you will be most successful if you select a fundraising strategy that complements your organization's mission. That way, you won't just raise the funds your organization needs to meet its immediate financial requirements. You'll also reinforce and help implement your organization's mission.

 

Ideally, to take full advantage of this workbook, your institution will have at least some rudiments of a strategic plan. We assume there is a clear articulation of your mission and your overall strategic direction as well as some delineation of your organization's major goals. If that's not the case, you don't need to stop reading. But you'll derive the most benefit if your organization has a strategic plan in place. The purpose of this workbook is to help you select a strategy that complements and helps implement your organization's mission as expressed in its overall strategy.

 

We believe there are five fundamental fundraising strategies that constitute the core of all resource development efforts -- Growth, Involvement, Visibility, Efficiency, and Stability (abbreviated "GIVES"). Mal Warwick's The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success (Jossey-Bass, 2000) makes the case for using these five strategies in a planning process that enables a nonprofit organization to analyze -- and strengthen -- its fundraising program.

 

This workbook will help you put the GIVES Model to work for your organization. In the following pages, we'll guide you step by step through this process. This will require that you select one of the five strategies in the GIVES Model as your primary fundraising strategy during the current phase of your organization's history -- and be single-minded in sticking with that strategy even though other attractive opportunities beckon.

 

Strategic planning experts routinely say that no strategic plan is useful forever. In fact, most such specialists advise that an organization reassess its strategic plan every three to five years to come to grips with changed circumstances. So it is with fundraising strategy, too.

 

It's rare that any organization will thrive indefinitely pursuing the same fundraising strategy. At some point in its history, your organization almost certainly must change the way it goes about its resource development activities. The natural evolution of fundraising techniques, the impact of external events, and the logic of organizational development -- all make it imperative for your organization to reevaluate its fundraising strategy every several years. And if you haven't yet done that even once, time's a-wasting!

 

This workbook is designed to guide the process of selecting the best fundraising strategy for your organization -- or to help you undertake the periodic reevaluation of your group's development strategy. The exercises will guide your personal reflection, and they can be used to facilitate the discussion process which we believe will help you select the strategy that will lead to fundraising success.

 

Who Should Use This Workbook, and Why

 

There are three kinds of people in fundraising:

(1) people who've been in the field "forever" and know more about fundraising than just about anyone they ever have to deal with;

(2) people who've been around long enough to know how much they don't understand; and

(3) people who are new to fundraising and haven't yet figured out how rich, diverse, and downright confusing the field can be.

 

We respectfully suggest that you can benefit from using this workbook regardless of the category you fall into:

 

* If your knowledge is limited -- whether you're a neophyte development staff person, a volunteer, a member of the board of trustees, a committed donor, or a nonprofit executive with broader responsibilities -- The Ten Steps to Fundraising Success can help you make your way, step by step, through the thickets of the fundraising forest. If you complete the simple exercises included in these pages, you should come out of this process with a big-picture understanding of the dynamics of the fundraising process as it applies to the unique circumstances of your organization.

 

* If you've already got a good grasp of fundraising fundamentals and you're deeply involved in the day-to-day work of resource development for your organization -- no matter what your relationship to the process -- you'll find this workbook an useful tool to evaluate your fundraising efforts and to plot a new course that can help you claim greater rewards for your organization.

 

* If you're an old hand at fundraising and you think you've seen it all, you may just be right about that -- but The Ten Steps to Fundraising Success will help you see the fundraising process and your own efforts in the field in an entirely new light. The fresh perspective laid out in this workbook will help you reassess what you've done in the past and weigh your course for the future. And the strategic planning process embodied in these pages will help you work in a productive and congenial environment with other key people in your organization. As you follow this process, you'll discover lots of opportunities to involve and train others and to increase mutual understanding.

 

The Ten Steps to Fundraising Success is based on The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success. If you've read that book, using this workbook should be a snap. But you won't encounter difficulty following this workbook even if you haven't read it.

 

This book is not an exposition of the five strategies, but rather a workbook that uses the five-strategy framework. In a sense, our goal here is both larger and more practical: to provide a process that will help you create a multi-faceted fundraising plan that complements your organizations' mission. We have written The Ten Steps to Fundraising Success to stand alone, and we hope you'll find it easy to read, easy to use, and -- most importantly -- useful, regardless of your circumstances.

 

How to Use This Workbook

 

There are three very good ways to use this workbook: (1) reading it by yourself cover to cover, (2) using one or more chapters or sets of worksheets to address some specific issue faced by your organization, or (3) following the entire planning process we've outlined.

 

The authors of this workbook have each served for more than two decades as consultants to nonprofit organizations. We have had the good fortune to work with hundreds of groups: small, medium, and large -- all over the country and across the spectrum of charitable endeavor. Our experience is that everyone and anyone in an organization can make a difference, regardless of job title or formal authority. Because Americans are philanthropic and because they care about the organizations they support, they will respond to almost any new or streamlined giving opportunity a nonprofit organization incorporates into its fundraising program.

 

So if you're just one person by yourself, you will benefit from this workbook. Each step will take you about 20 to 30 minutes to read all the way through. Thus, if you only spend three to four hours reading this book and responding to as many of the exercises as possible, you'll have a much better overview of nonprofit fundraising -- along with dozens of new ideas to consider for your work.

 

You may find it helpful to use just parts of this workbook. Your organization's fundraising program may be in good shape and producing the revenue you need. But there are one or two specific problems you want to solve. Or perhaps you're considering undertaking a new initiative like a special event or a planned giving program. You'll find individual worksheets to help you evaluate your course of action. In most cases, the individual steps and each of the exercises stand on their own.

 

We hope, though, that some readers will use the book in the third way -- by following the entire process, step by step. You don't need to respond to every question or fill out every exercise. But if you're able to assemble a team of people and devote at least some time to every step, your organization's fundraising will be strengthened significantly.

 

Strategic planning is not a fruitful exercise for a lone individual. It's most effective when key stakeholders in an organization fully buy into the process. And that's just as true in setting fundraising strategy as it is in any other critical area of your organization's operations.

 

Without broad-based consent, it's highly unlikely that you will be able to make the difficult choices involved in concentrating your development activities around one core strategic concept. If you determine your fundraising strategy through a deliberate discussion that involves your board of directors, key volunteers, and responsible staff, then it will be much easier to implement that strategy -- and your chances of success much higher.

 

If you decide to assemble a team of key individuals and follow the entire process, we encourage you to avoid spending too much time in planning. The point of all this is to raise more money for your organization, not to create the perfect plan. You could devote dozens of meetings and months of work. Rather, we urge you to limit yourself to three to five meetings of two to three hours each (or one or two weekend retreats). The initial ideas and immediate responses to the exercises we've created will, in most instances, produce more than adequate information and lots of useful insights. From this admittedly incomplete data, we're confident you can select the best strategy for your organization's fundraising success.

 

What's Ahead

 

This workbook is organized into ten chapters that we call "steps." It's constructed to help you move, step by step, through the process of applying the GIVES Model to your organization.

 

* Step One: We'll help you assess your organization's current fundraising efforts. A series of four exercises will allow you to zero in on many of the most critical elements that lead to success or failure in resource development.

 

* Step 2: The exercises in this chapter will continue the assessment process by helping you evaluate board members, executive staff, and development personnel. You'll discover the skills and experience levels of those who will play key roles in implementing your new fundraising strategy.

 

* Step 3: You'll gain an overview of the GIVES Model, and you'll weigh the costs and benefits of each of the Five Strategies for Fundraising Success in the light of your organization's unique mission and circumstances.

 

* Step 4: With two simple exercises, we'll help you assemble a team to select the best strategy for your organization . . . we offer suggestions for creating an environment conducive to discussion . . . and we provide a tentative outline for organizing your fundraising planning sessions.

 

* Step 5: Two comprehensive worksheets will help guide you and your colleagues through the process of choosing the right combination of primary and secondary fundraising strategies to set a course in resource development that's uniquely appropriate for your organization.

 

* Step 6: A systematic process involving five exercises will help you set appropriate fundraising goals consistent with the strategy you've chosen.

 

* Step 7: A simple exercise -- repeated as often as necessary --will allow you to turn your fundraising goals into achievable objectives.

 

* Step 8: You'll gain an overview of the potential applications of the ten most common fundraising techniques, with in-depth exploration of the five most widely used of these techniques.

 

* Step 9: You'll find a useful tool that will help you stay on schedule and deploy the resources you need when you most need them, even though you don't have all the answers.

 

* Step 10: In this final chapter, five simple worksheets will help you measure your organization's progress in achieving its fundraising objectives and goals -- and help you see what areas deserve further review and remedial attention.

 

If you're assembling a planning team to choose and implement your fundraising strategy, you may find it helpful to see these ten steps as three stages -- with different levels of participation in each stage. The first three steps will help you assess your organization and understand the five fundamental fundraising strategies available to you. This stage can be completed by individuals working alone, with newcomers and volunteers unable to answer all the questions. However, we recommend you do meet as a group to report and discuss individual assessments.

 

Steps Four through Six will guide you through the process of selecting a fundraising strategy and developing goals that support that strategy. Here is where we find it most useful to involve a group of key individuals to engage in a deliberate discussion of your organization's strategic options.

 

The third group of steps -- Seven through Ten -- deal with the implementation of the fundraising strategy you select and with the evaluation of your progress in reaching your new goals. Especially for larger and more complex organizations, this may be a stage where board members and volunteers are less involved. Professional staff may wish to complete the exercises in these last four steps, and then summarize their findings for review by the strategy planning team and the organization's board of directors.

 

We've prepared a simple chart to illustrate the cyclical nature of the planning process in this workbook. (Insert graphic intro1.1 about here.) Along the way (monthly, quarterly, or every six months), you'll be measuring your progress But if you follow these ten steps, you will inevitably be led to a top-to-bottom review your primary fundraising strategy. Every three years or so (or at critical junctures in your organization's history), you will begin the process over again -- to select a new strategy to reflect your organization's changed circumstances and new opportunities.

 

These Ten Steps to Fundraising Success won't solve all your fundraising problems. They certainly won't compensate for your organization's weaknesses, in and of themselves. But if you pursue the methodical course we've laid out in this workbook, we believe you stand a far better chance of identifying both your weaknesses and your strengths -- and of making the most of both in a long-term effort to fulfill your organization's mission.

 

That, after all, is the reason we wrote this workbook. It's your mission, your goals, and your fundraising program. Only you can do what needs to be done. We simply hope we've made it just a little easier for you to do it.

 

Mal Warwick and Stephen Hitchcock
Berkeley, California, June 2001