Every agency has its unique resources and capacity for Fund Development. Everyone is at a different place, whether they have developed a formal Fund Development Plan, have dedicated positions to manage and research funding, or whether it all falls on the Executive Director who accesses board members, staff or volunteers. This section of Articles on Fund Development are to hopefully identify skills, resources or developing trends that could benefit most every agency.

99+ Diverse Fundraising Ideas!

99+ Fundraising Ideas

Fundraising Guide: Creating a Calendar and Goals

To begin, let’s work on your agency/program’s Fund Development by creating your fundraising plan, goals, and calendar and start by diving deeper into these following steps:​

  1. Understand Your Need & Goals

We encourage you to begin this process by understanding your needs to pinpoint your goal. 

  1. Outline Your Strategies For The Year

Fundraising calendars incorporate elements of a strategic plan. In fact, just as you’d use a strategic plan to guide your organization’s mission, you want to do the same for your fundraising goals.

  1. List Resources

Fundraising is more than a will. You also need a way.

And I have found that listing your resources in a clear, organized manner can help you wrap your brain around how you can go about raising the funds needed.

Let’s ask some questions about staff, volunteers, board, and budget.

4. Study Your Organization’s Past Fundraising Trends

If you don’t know where you are, how can you understand where you need to go? You may have heard this saying a time or two, and it really rings true when it comes to fundraising. 

The strongest way to grow your resources is to understand what has worked in past fundraising efforts, but also what hasn’t.

  1. Create A Path Forward

It’s finally time to start putting it all together. You now have a deep, thorough understanding of your goals, strategies, the resources you have to meet those goals, and some techniques that worked in the past

So, let’s touch some more on these fundraising techniques. After all, fundraising professionals don’t simply rely on direct mail anymore. Today, your fundraising options sometimes seem, well, endless. And, that’s a GOOD thing!

Contact me, if you want to look deeper at your Agency or Program’s Fund Development potential and capacity. Every program is different, just like ever community, but we have a great deal to learn from other’s experiences!