Remove the Noise From Your Fundraising Plans

Why do we find it easier to plan for a social event, a business trip or even a vacation than to manage the business of our department, division or nonprofit? For events or travel, we approach it quite simply: Here’s what needs to be done, or here’s where I want to go. And then we plan it.

But when it comes to managing the functions and operations for which we’re responsible, we struggle and wander. And we easily get off point.

For instance, a manager charged with raising $5 million in one financial period might create a fundraising plan that goes on and on about branding, communication, education, public relations and then finally gets to the point about what he and his employees are going to do to get the $5 million.

It is true that branding, communication, education and public relations have something to do with securing the $5 million. But placing a disproportionate amount of attention on those items will cause too much expense investment to flow toward those activities, which will then starve the essential functions of resources needed to secure the $5 million.

I have seen this happen so many times. The marketing manager, the communications department manager, the head of public relations, and the leader of education and advocacy all demand major chunks of the expense budget to execute their programs. When the whole planning and budgeting exercise is done, there is very few expense money left to actually secure the revenue needed.

And the top manager and leader, by reading and assimilating all of those plans and sitting with the authors of those plans, gets drawn into the content, values and energy related to the plans and loses awareness of what is important and what is needed to secure the funds he has been asked to secure.

Believe me. It is very subtle, which is why it is so dangerous and non-productive to manage this way.

What I suggest instead is to manage by objectives. Here is how that works.

First, you wipe your mind clear of all that you are currently doing. You zero-base your entire planning exercise. All that is in front of you is a blank sheet of paper or a blank document. Nothing more.

Then you write down the objective. In this case, it might be: “Secure $5 million in revenue by date.”

Then you put down the three to five ways you are going to do that, which may, at the macro-level, be these points:

1. Secure $X million from current individual and organizational donors. This is the whole ask and upgrading thing you will do with your current donors.
2. Secure $Y million from new individual and organizational donors. This is all about investing in aggressive donor acquisition.
3. Retain individual donors at X% and organization donors at Y%. This is about retention — having a clear plan to retain your good donors for this year and next.
4. Develop marketing, communications and public relations plans that support No. 1 through No. 3. Here, you are controlling and focusing your other department/division leaders to support the main thing you are trying to do (i.e. secure the $5 million for this year). This clearly sets up the expectation that they will not be writing any plans to do anything but support securing the $5 million.
5. Develop back-office functions, like receipting, that support No. 3 to retain and upgrade donors. Again, the strong directive to these back-office functions is to focus, focus, focus on what they are going to do to retain donors.

Notice how all of this brings focus and alignment of all functions, departments, and divisions to the main thing — to secure the $5 million. That’s it. Nothing more or less. Focus.

Take out your current plan or the one you are working on for your next financial period and ask yourself if it’s focused on the right things. 

• Have you stated the specific objective for the year? 
• Do you have feeder objectives that support that main objective? 
• Have you stripped away all of  the other noise and irrelevant planning that has more to do with the personal desires and self-expression of your managers than they do with reaching the main objective? 

Get back to what’s important. Get back to the main thing. Simplify. Focus. If you do this, you will experience success.

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.