How to Write a Nonprofit Fundraising Plan in 7 Steps
A nonprofit fundraising plan is a written, 12-month roadmap that defines what you’ll raise, who’s responsible, and how you’ll reach your goals, moving fundraising from reactive to proactive.
Nonprofits with written fundraising plans consistently outperform organizations without them. However, many nonprofits lack these important guiding strategies. For example, according to a NonprofitPRO survey, 56% of nonprofit leaders said their organizations don’t have a donor management system, an essential part of a fundraising plan.
A fundraising plan defines clear goals, keeps your team on track, holds you accountable, and ultimately helps you raise more for your cause. But where should you start when writing your plan?
In this quick guide, we’ll explain the crucial steps your team needs to take to build your fundraising plan. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Why are fundraising plans so essential?
- 7 steps to create a fundraising plan
- Take your fundraising further with Bloomerang
Why are fundraising plans so essential?
It’s no secret that nonprofits fail often. But having a solid fundraising plan in place exponentially reduces the likelihood of failure.
Creating a plan sets your organization up to achieve its goals methodically with the right fundraising strategies, technology, and team collaboration.
A study by Concord Leadership Group found that nonprofits with a written strategic plan were more likely to:
- Collaborate with other nonprofits
- Have boards willing to take calculated risks
- Have a formal process for measuring leadership effectiveness across their organizations
A strategic plan gives your nonprofit the foundation it needs to scale up its efforts effectively. When your team feels confident in your plan, they’re able to refocus their efforts on what matters most: your mission and helping your community.
7 steps to create a fundraising plan
While every fundraising plan looks a bit different, they all involve the same planning steps and core components. Explore these key steps to build a reliable, robust fundraising plan.
1. Assess past fundraising performance.
The first step in making a fundraising plan isn’t thinking about the future—it’s taking stock of your past. Establishing a baseline by reviewing your revenue data from the past three to five fiscal years allows you to set measurable, realistic goals based on actual trends rather than guesswork.
Look back at your previous fundraising initiatives and outreach campaigns to assess your strengths, challenges, and opportunities.
Consider running a quick SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) during this stage. It’s a great optional tool to help your team visually map out internal capabilities against external opportunities and challenges.
As you dig into your data, ask yourself these questions:
- Which fundraising sources offer the best return on investment?
- How well are we engaging with our donors?
- What were our donor retention and new donor acquisition rates?
- How many of our fundraising initiatives reached their goals?
- Who are our most loyal donors? What do we want to learn from them, and how will we ask?
- What are our common fundraising pain points or challenges?
Answer these questions and review the data from past campaigns to understand where your organization currently stands and how you can build on past performance.
2. Define fundraising goals.
Writing down your goals encourages you to clarify objectives and identify the tasks and timeline needed to complete them. The best goals are SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Here are a few examples of SMART goals you might set for your organization:
- We will plan and launch a monthly giving program by September 1 and engage at least 100 donors in it.
- We will recruit two volunteers to join the board development committee, train them, and have them in place by April 15.
- We will grow our donor base by 10% by June using direct mail appeals, social media posts, and our giving day campaign.
- We will improve overall donor retention by 15% (to 50% overall) by creating and implementing a donor-centered stewardship plan. This plan will include at least seven meaningful, personal thank-you touchpoints in a six-month period.
Define your goals by looking at your past performance and your nonprofit’s future growth plans. What can you reasonably achieve with your current tools and capacity?
3. Update your case for support.
Your nonprofit’s case for support is your reason why donors should contribute to your cause. When building a fundraising plan, it helps to have a solid case for support to craft your fundraising and marketing initiatives.
When you organize your messaging around a guiding idea or theme, you’ll have an easier time communicating why donors should support you and what their support will accomplish.
Refresh your organization’s case for support by:
- Conducting audience research. Has your organization’s audience evolved or grown recently? Conduct audience research to assess your supporter base’s demographics, interests, and motivations. This step helps ensure you’re creating a case for support that appeals to your unique audience.
- Incorporating storytelling. Centralizing your messaging around a single person or story helps you build empathy among your audience members. Use storytelling techniques, such as introducing the main character, the issue your organization is trying to address, and your proposed solution.
- Connecting donations to impact. Donors want to know that their contributions will actually make a difference. Make sure your message includes specific descriptions of how you’ll use donations. For instance, you might explain that a $100 gift can purchase supplies for 10 shelter dogs, or a monthly $20 donation helps keep your children’s after-school program stocked with snacks.
Once you’ve revamped your case for support, you can incorporate it into your email, social media, and direct mail campaigns, as well as your in-person donor meetings.
4. Identify fundraising methods.
What are the actual fundraising initiatives, campaigns, or events you’re going to launch in order to reach your defined goals? For example, you might decide to plan:
- Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns
- An auction/gala
- A social media challenge
- A fundraising 5K/Fun Run
- A direct mail campaign
- An email campaign
- A giving day/GivingTuesday challenge
Choose your fundraising initiatives based on events and campaigns you’ve had the greatest success with in the past, and what you think supporters will be most interested in moving forward.
For instance, you might have held most of your fundraising events in person in the past, but recently discovered that supporters are interested in attending virtual or hybrid events. You can incorporate these event types more moving forward to appeal to supporters’ current preferences.
5. Prepare your marketing channels.
A strong fundraising plan should also identify the marketing channels you’ll use to get the word out about your fundraising initiatives. These marketing channels might include:
- Social media
- Direct mail
- Your website
- Local news/radio
- Google Ads
Review your donor profiles and marketing engagement analytics to determine your target audience’s preferred communication platforms. Then, focus your efforts on those channels to connect with the right people. This process allows you to focus on marketing channels that will deliver a higher return on investment (ROI) for your campaign.
6. Determine and assign responsibilities.
The next step in crafting your fundraising plan is assigning responsibilities to your staff, board members, and other volunteers and adding them to a calendar.
Your fundraising plan should clearly define:
- Each overall goal (fundraising amount to hit, donors to connect with, etc.)
- The individual, team, or department in charge of working toward that goal
- The associated fundraising initiatives you will launch to help reach that goal
- Benchmarks to hit along the way
- The events you will host to support that goal
With a clear plan, you ensure all team members are aligned on your priorities. However, that doesn’t mean your plan has to be set in stone.
Unexpected circumstances and challenges frequently arise during the implementation of any strategy, along with new opportunities you might not have considered. Keep your plan flexible and adjust it as needed to account for these obstacles and opportunities.
7. Use the right fundraising tools to support your plan.
To carry out your fundraising plan effectively and efficiently, you’ll need dedicated fundraising tools. Rather than bouncing between disconnected systems, look for a unified system that keeps your data and campaigns in one place:
- Giving platform to store and manage donor information, simplify online giving, identify your most and least engaged donors, and pull fundraising reports
- Marketing software to help create campaigns and analyze engagement metrics
- Social media scheduling tools to help you develop an active social media presence
- Event planning software to plan and manage your fundraising events and volunteer staff
- Matching gift database tool to follow up with match-eligible donors and encourage them to submit matching gifts through their employers
- AI fundraising tools to reveal personalized outreach opportunities and recommend exactly who to contact, when to reach out, and what to say to build deeper connections
If you lack any of these solutions and are looking to expand your technology stack, choose solutions that integrate with your existing software. Integrations allow for simplified data migrations and keep all of your fundraising activities under one roof.
Or, better yet, look for a unified giving platform that brings together multiple fundraising tools—online donation solutions, CRM software, marketing and engagement solutions, etc.—into one easy-to-use platform (like Bloomerang!).
13 common fundraising mistakes to avoid
There are several common mistakes people make in planning that hold them back and keep them from pulling their plan together, which cripples their nonprofit’s ability to move forward. See if any of these describe your situation:
1. Too Busy
Some people know they need a plan, but can’t seem to carve out the time to work on it. The truth is, you make time for what is important to you. If you say you have no time to plan, that’s just an excuse covering up some other reason why you don’t want to plan.
2. Need it to be RIGHT!
Too many people wait for the perfect time, the perfect board, the perfect staff, the perfect template, or a perfect something else to work on their fundraising plan. But you know what? There will never be a perfect time, board, staff, or template. So, you just have to use what you have and get your plan done. And anyway, done is better than perfect, meaning that a plan that’s 80% finished but 100% implemented will always outperform the perfect plan that’s never completed.
3. Analysis Paralysis
Some folks delay working on their fundraising plan because they think they need a little more info. One more report will show them a magic piece of information they’re missing. One more person’s input will make all the difference. This is actually a procrastination technique, commonly used to avoid making a decision or committing to a course of action.
4. Unclear Goals
It’s hard to cross the finish line when you don’t know where it is. Goals like “raise more money” or “raise more than last year” are too vague to be useful. You’ll never know when to kick in the afterburners to reach your goal or do the Happy Dance once you’ve reached it. You can’t create a fundraising plan to raise the money you need if your goals aren’t clear.
5. Planning Based on Emotion, Not Data
What’s worse than unclear goals is the wrong-sized goals. Wrong-sized goals are either way too big a stretch and unrealistic, or they’re no stretch at all. Either way, wrong-sized goals leave you with no motivation to actually work your plan.
6. Unrealistic Board Expectations
You may be either putting too much expectation on your board, thinking they will rise to the challenge and suddenly start fundraising, or you may be completely leaving them out. They’re supposed to be your partners in fulfilling your nonprofit’s mission, so find a way to include them in your fundraising plan. That means you may need to have individual conversations with board members to ask them where they’d like to plug in to help.
7. Imaginary Plans
Way too many people say they have a plan, but it’s not written down anywhere. If it’s not in writing, it’s not real. The plan in your head can change too easily, and there’s no one to hold you accountable when you don’t complete part of it. It’s too easy for you to drop parts of your imaginary plan, shift things around, or back off on your goals because you don’t feel like doing certain parts. Ready to take your fundraising plan seriously? Write it down.
8. No Resources for Execution
Be sure that whatever you put in your plan is actually doable. Make sure you have time, money, and manpower to execute the details of your plan. Otherwise, your plan will just be another document with no benefit and a waste of time to create.
9. Not enough Details
Maybe you have a big-picture plan put together, but no idea how it will get done. You did the first step by deciding what fundraising activities you’ll engage in this year, but didn’t include any action plans detailing the who, what, when, and how much. A fundraising plan without action steps is like a car with no wheels – it’s not going anywhere. So, take the time to figure out the details of how your plan will get done.
10. Overestimating Yourself
A well-chosen, well-done fundraising event can generate revenue, awareness, and new supporters. But too many small nonprofits find themselves on the “Special Event Hamster Wheel,” holding event after event after event. Events are very labor-intensive and, pound for pound, less productive than other forms of fundraising. So, do ONE event and make it a signature event. Put all you’ve got into it and hit it out of the park. Then move on to other things. Too many small, barely worthwhile events will wear you out, wear your community out, and wear your volunteers out.
11. Too Many Events
A well-chosen, well-done fundraising event can generate revenue, awareness, and new supporters. But too many small nonprofits find themselves on the “Special Event Hamster Wheel,” holding event after event after event. Events are very labor-intensive and, pound for pound, less productive than other forms of fundraising. So, do ONE event and make it a signature event. Put all you’ve got into it and hit it out of the park. Then move on to other things. Too many small, barely worthwhile events will wear you out, wear your community out, and wear your volunteers out.
12. Lack of Fundraising Diversity
Have you ever tried to sit on a one-legged stool? I doubt it would be very stable. Two legs wouldn’t work well, either. But three or four legs would make that stool safe to sit on. The same thing goes for funding streams. It’s not safe to live on one source of revenue. Yet too many small nonprofits try to fund their entire operations from a single large grant or a single major gift. If that one source of revenue goes away, you’ve got a BIG problem, and you’ll be scrambling to find other ways to bring in money. Having diverse revenue streams creates stability for the nonprofit. If something happens to one income stream, you’ve got others to fall back on.
13. Wrong Sized Goals
What’s worse than unclear goals is the wrong-sized goals. Wrong-sized goals are either way too big a stretch and unrealistic, or they’re no stretch at all. Either way, wrong-sized goals leave you with no motivation to actually work your plan.
Avoid these common planning mistakes, and you’ll find yourself on the way to creating a fundraising plan that works for you and brings in the money you need to fully fund your budget!
The 1-10-1000 rule for choosing the right mix of events
An incredibly useful strategy to keep in mind when choosing the right mix of events and funding sources is The 1-10-1000 Rule, developed by Sandy Rees at Get Fully Funded.
This rule is designed to prevent “event burnout” (where your team is exhausted by throwing constant, tiny fundraisers) and instead build a highly diversified, sustainable revenue model.
Here is how the 1-10-1000 structure breaks down:
1 — One signature event
Instead of running several small, exhausting events throughout the year, focus your energy on one major signature fundraising event. Make it something the community immediately associates with your brand, load it up with solid corporate sponsorships, hit it out of the park, and then move on.
10 — Ten grants
Keep a healthy grant pipeline moving. Research and identify 10 solid, high-probability grant opportunities that fit your mission, map them out on a deadline calendar, and steadily pursue them throughout the year.
1000 — One thousand donors
Diversify your risk by building your individual donor base up to 1,000 active donors. If you aren’t there yet, take it 100 donors at a time. Having a massive family of individual donors protects you; if you lose one grant or a single donor walks away, you still have 999 other supporters keeping your doors open.
Take your fundraising further with Bloomerang
What if you could raise more without doing more? Bloomerang’s fundraising tools were built to fit how your nonprofit works. No matter how you choose to structure your fundraising plan, our purpose-built solutions can support your efforts.
Our giving platform offers the following features to support year-round fundraising:
- Mobile-first fundraising forms, so you can engage supporters effectively on the devices they use the most
- Event-planning tools that facilitate seamless ticketing, check-ins, and event fundraising
- AI-powered donor prompting to encourage retention and upgrades
- User-friendly peer-to-peer fundraising tools to empower supporters to fundraise on your behalf and grow your network
- Flexible donation options, from credit/debit cards to digital wallets and tap-to-pay
Bloomerang offers the supportive infrastructure you need to maximize your current fundraising initiatives. Whether you want to grow major gifts, increase recurring giving, or boost your annual fund, our fundraising software can meet you where you are to grow your impact.
Wrapping up
Use impact metrics to track the success of your fundraising plan throughout the year. Helpful data points include donor retention, average gift size, fundraising event participation, and revenue from different initiatives. Keeping a close eye on these key performance indicators will empower you to grow from your mistakes and capitalize on your strengths.
Looking for more information about creating and carrying out an effective fundraising plan? Review Bloomerang’s additional resources on the topic:
- Fundraising Apps: 25+ Tools To Help Your Org Raise More. Interested in learning more about the best fundraising software tools available for nonprofits? This roundup reviews the most effective solutions and what they specialize in.
- Major Gifts 101: What You Need to Know to Raise More. Acquiring major gifts requires a specialized, tailored fundraising strategy aimed at developing relationships with high-value donors. Use this guide to build your major gift fundraising program.
- The Ultimate Donor Engagement Guide + Top Strategies. Your fundraising plan must include a dedicated strategy for engaging donors and building stronger relationships. This guide provides top strategies for better donor engagement.
