Fundraising the SMART Way: Predictable, Consistent Income Growth for Your Charity, + Website

Chapter 5The Fund Development Pipeline

The fund development pipeline is that useful checklist of opportunities currently being cultivated, from which we forecast the gifts and grants we expect to come in, and when. The pipeline concept is ubiquitous in the for-profit world, but I've met quite a few nonprofit executives who aren't familiar with it. What's worse, it hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention from providers of donor-management software, which tends on the whole to pay more attention to managing donors after acquisition and to be weak on the cultivation process. Virtually every corporate sales-force automation platform has a module dedicated to opportunity management, and it would be advantageous if all nonprofit platforms did so as well.

It's easy to tell when development officers lack effective automated ways to report on their fundraising pipelines. Instead of simple reports with tables, charts, and graphs, they deliver anecdotes, short stories about gifts, grants, or sponsorships that haven't come to fruition yet. Often, such anecdotes are heavy on details of a particular situation, such as why your donor canceled the meeting, but light on the evidence of progress.

Human psychology is predictable, unfortunately. Too many stories with too much distracting detail doesn't always lead to applause. More likely your audience will remember your screw-ups and failures, and forget about stuff that's going well. They may jump in with off-the-cuff suggestions out of context. ...