Fundraising for Social Change, 7th Edition

chapter 30 Creating a Fundraising Plan

Even though I am a big fan of budgeting and planning, it is instructive to start this chapter with an old fundraising saw: “Fundraising is 10 percent planning and 90 percent follow-up calls.” Although many people hate planning, I fairly frequently find people who take so much time to plan that they have no time to actually do the work. So this is a short chapter because, although planning has to be done thoughtfully and as thoroughly as possible, a plan that is not implemented is more problematic than working with no plan.

Planning for fundraising is not difficult to do. And even though planning should not be what you spend most of your time on, it is also true that one hour of planning can save three hours of work.

There are five steps to creating a workable plan.

STEP 1: SET A GOAL

Your financial goal will come from your budget, which you can create using the principles outlined in Chapter Twenty-Nine.

STEP 2: SPELL OUT THE DETAILS OF EACH INCOME STRATEGY

The biggest lament people have about planning is “plans don’t work.” This is true—plans are not prophecies. They are created assuming that most of what has been true will continue to be true—they do not factor in massive natural disasters or arson or fraud, although an implemented plan will have done what can be done to prepare for or insure against such events. However, the main reason plans fail is not because of huge unexpected occurrences but because there was no detail to the ...