Fundraising Plan: instruments and ideas.

source: flickr

Welcome back on Fundraiser’s Diary!
When I star thinking about this post I wonder: “What can I say about fundraising planning that Mal Warwick hadn’t say yet?”
And the answers that I found were:

A. I could write about intruments of management control
B. I could write about instruments of retention calculation
C. Mal said everything, so I could change argoument and write about cooking

Even if I think that “my guru” analized very well every aspect of fundraising planning, and my cooking skills are great, I want to challenge myself… …and write about my personal experience in this field showing which instruments I usually use.

First of all I have to thank who invented the calculating sheet (excel, numbers, ecc.) without it my work couldn’t be the same… maybe couldn’t be at all
In the other hand I’ve to say that excel could help you , but writing that a message give the 1,5% of redemption doesn’t meen that you really do this result. So use excel but don’t think it’s enought to have donations.

And now let’s start speaking how to use excel (or numbers if you are mac user)!
When I start planning for an organization (when I was a consultant they are many, now “only” one) I usually create 3 master documents :

1. Schedule of operations
2. Progress of activities
3. Plan of mesurable activities and scenarios

(don’t forget that your planning work could start only if board or management give you budget ammount and target ammount to reach.)

The Schedule of operations is a document that create a relation in between human resources of your fundraising department, the activities you have planned to do and the time your HR have to spend. In this way you can plan the commitment and foresee what is viable and what is not.
The scheme is simple: in the first column you have the activities, the other columns are composed by the name, one per column, of your HR (in the first row) the time they have to spend, in the second one, and in the other rows, that match whit the activities, you have to put the hours they (or you) plan to dedicate to the singular activity. By the way if some one want to see a demo of this document can hire me , or only write me.

The progress of activities is a document that schedule all the activities you planned to do. In this sheet you can see in a synoptical way the development of your operations through a timeline. Is really usefull also to understand the workload period by period and by the way even to cut (or add) some activities from your plan.

The 3rd document is the plan of mesurable activities and scenarios. This is the most elaborate one. It calculate, for all your mesurable activities, rate of redempion, costs and earnings.
You can use it non only to foresee but also to control, step by step, the real trend of your operations and the spread in between your estimate and the resoult of your activities.
This document let you understand, during the year, when it’s time to adjust your plan, graduating your investement and postpone (or disclose) the operations.

These documents are only the base of the planning activity, but, in my opinion, with the logical addition, they could be usefull for fundraiser that have planning tasks (at least in italy). I’m very courios to know if this kind of planning istruments could be usefull also outside my Country… some one want to help me?

P.S. Happy birthday Paolo and Happy birthday Fundraising Now!