How to Write a Fundraising Strategy

Is your organization about to have a fundraiser, but you don't know how to maximize the benefits? You will want to start by writing a fundraising strategy, then implement those ideas to raise money. Fundraising strategies can sometimes be tricky to write, but if you have a plan in mind, it will keep you organized, and make writing the plan much easier.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

How to Write a Fundraising Strategy

1. Decide on a type of event or a theme as a starting point for building your fundraising strategy. Basically, you'll want an outline drawn up of what you want to do, what you are hoping to achieve (both financially and exposure-wise), and how you intend to reach your fundraising goal.

2. Put together a fundraising team. Recruit individuals to help you who are dedicated, responsible, and who work well together. For example, if you are raising money for a team sport, you could get team members, coaches, and parents to help out. It can be very beneficial to get individuals together who come from various skill backgrounds. This will help if you need to write letters, solicit local businesses, perform physical labor, talk to local media, or outright ask people for money. By choosing a fundraising team with varied backgrounds, you can allow each person to work in his specialized area to optimize your fundraising strategy.

3. Develop a fundraising timeline. Figure out exactly what you need to do, and by what point each step needs to be accomplished. You can use one of your team members to head up the organization of the timeline. By delegating duties, it will make the entire fundraiser flow much more smoothly.

4. Prepare a budget. Now that you know who you have working for you, what they individually excel at, and a timeline for your fundraiser, you can decide how much money you want to expend to put on the fundraiser, and still be able to make a substantial amount for your organization. Ideally, you will want to expend a very small amount of money to put on the fundraiser, so plan accordingly.

5. Find a location for the fundraiser. Make sure you have someone on your team who is good with negotiations who can work with local businesses for sponsorship, venue, signs and publicity, and a way to blanket invitations to the target audience. By doing this, you will show the owner of the venue that your fundraiser will raise awareness of the venue, ergo providing him with free advertising.

6. Research the community. Find local businesses or individuals who have an invested interest in your organization and would be willing to front money or other support to put on the fundraiser.

7. Discuss your fundraiser with local media. The television, radio and newspaper can be your best form of free advertisement in a news story. This will work especially well if your fundraiser is something out of the ordinary (not just a bake sale or car wash). Develop a letter or press release with a contact person listed who can discuss details of the upcoming fundraiser with the media and send it to all available media outlets.

8. Organize a post-fundraiser program. Get some of your volunteers to be in charge of sending out thank-you notes to everyone who helped make your fundraiser a success. Businesses are more than likely to work with you again and think of you and your organization more highly if you take the time to thank them for their help.

Tips & Warnings

• Delegate, delegate, delegate! Put together a team of individuals who are responsible and can manage mini-projects and various parts of the fundraiser on their own.
• Keep your plan simple and organized.
• Always remember to thank everyone who helped with the fundraiser.
• Approach local media to cover your event as a new story to get publicity.
• Make sure you don't exceed your budget, if anything, try to stay as far below budget as possible.
• Never take for granted people who or businesses that help you with your fundraising efforts.

Resources

• Fundraising Ideas
• Non-Profit Organization Fundraising