Fundraising Strategy for Beginners: How to Create Your Own
Whether you’re a fundraising professional, a PTA president, or a church pastor, you know that fundraising involves a lot of moving parts that can feel challenging to manage. That’s why you need to develop a rock-solid fundraising strategy to guide your team.
A complete fundraising strategy will lay out a roadmap for you to follow at every stage of the fundraising process, helping you avoid stress, stay organized, and ultimately raise more money for your mission! To help you develop a thorough strategy, this guide will cover everything you need to know, including:
The steps and best practices in this guide can be adapted to fit all different scales of campaigns. However, if you’re taking on a major initiative like a capital campaign, we recommend a more in-depth look at our capital campaign planning guide due to these campaigns’ complexity. If not, let’s get started!
Nonprofit Fundraising Strategy FAQs
Before we launch into the specific steps of creating (or revamping!) your organization’s fundraising strategy, let’s first cover some frequently asked questions about nonprofit fundraising strategies. This will help you understand just how important it is to spend time designing your fundraising strategy so you can approach the process as intentionally as possible.
What is a nonprofit fundraising strategy?
A nonprofit fundraising strategy is a detailed plan created to guide you through a chosen campaign. Fundraising strategies vary depending on the size, capacity, and goals of the nonprofit planning them, along with the specifics of the campaign being planned.
Regardless of the fundraising goal in sight, the main thing to remember when crafting your strategy is to be thorough. A well-thought-out, detailed fundraising strategy can help ensure you’ve covered all of your bases when it’s time to launch your campaign, giving you the greatest chance of success.
Why is it important for a nonprofit to have a fundraising strategy?
Creating a detailed fundraising strategy gives you a clear idea of how to plan and execute a successful fundraising campaign that reaches its goals. But a truly thorough fundraising plan can also accomplish the following:
Root your fundraising campaign in your organization’s mission
Give you the chance to set ambitious yet achievable campaign goals
Provide your entire team with a clear idea of their responsibilities for the duration of the campaign
Give you a resource to turn to when your campaign gets off track
Boost your confidence and reduce your stress as you embark on a fundraising campaign
You can think of designing a nonprofit fundraising strategy as laying the foundation for your campaign. The more solid and sure your foundation is, the easier time you’ll have building on that foundation in order to achieve your fundraising campaign goals.
How do I create a fundraising strategy for my nonprofit?
Start with a clear understanding about the success of your previous campaigns and a rough idea of what goals and objectives you want to accomplish during your upcoming campaign.
Then, you’ll simply walk through all the pieces of your campaign, planning out each aspect in as much detail as possible. Remember, you can tinker with your strategy as you go, fine-tuning it as your campaign progresses or your plans change.
To get started with your own strategy, read on to explore our 12 steps for creating a plan!
How to Create a Fundraising Strategy: 12 Steps
Now that you understand the basics of what a nonprofit fundraising strategy is and why it matters, you’re likely eager to begin building your own. Let’s dive into the steps your organization should follow to create its own fundraising strategy.
Step 1: Review your present fundraising processes and past campaign performance.
Before putting pen to paper to outline your next fundraising strategy, take the time to fully understand where you’re starting from. Analyze your current fundraising tactics and how they’ve performed in the past. Review your previous strategies and fundraising data to answer questions like:
Who makes up your donor base?
What were your most successful campaigns?
What were your least successful campaigns?
Which marketing channels and/or direct communication methods reach your donor base the best?
Are you actively tracking performance towards concrete goals? (If not, look ahead to Step 11 to learn more about this tactic!)
Which key fundraising metrics are performing well, if any, and which could be improved?
Your organization may benefit from the input of an outside perspective during this review process, especially if you’re planning a large-scale campaign or major fundraising push. An external fundraising consultant or agency can objectively audit your current fundraising strategy to help determine your organization’s strengths and weaknesses and make campaign recommendations.
Step 2: Determine guidelines and goals for your new campaign.
Once you’ve reviewed your organization’s fundraising history and donor data, it’s time to build the scaffolding for your campaign. This involves establishing some basic guidelines that can lead your campaign in the right direction from the start. At this stage, you need to bring your team together to decide:
The type of campaign you’ll launch. Determine the type of campaign you’ll launch based on your fundraiser’s purpose. For example, are you raising funds for a new program or initiative? Or are you holistically revamping your annual fundraising efforts to cover general operating expenses? The type of campaign you choose will affect your timeline, budget, storytelling strategy, and staff responsibilities.
The deadline and timeframe of the campaign. Establishing a general timeline will give your campaign structure and ensure that your staff, board, and volunteers are all on the same page. You may set dates for particular types of outreach or decide on monthly revenue benchmarks that will help you reach your fundraising goal. Either way, set a clear date of completion, along with several benchmarks to serve as check-in points.
The key goals of the campaign. In addition to setting a revenue goal, select a few strategic areas you want to improve and goals to direct your team’s efforts. For instance, if a key goal is to build out your list of major donors, plan to spend more time on prospect research and major donor stewardship versus focusing on crowdfunding.
This template illustrates the types of goals you may set for a new campaign, broken down into a topline revenue goal and a few strategic focus areas:
Though this template showcases example goals for a major fundraising campaign like a capital campaign, the core idea remains the same for any kind of campaign—don’t just set a topline revenue goal! Strive to improve in a few key strategic focus areas, too.
Step 3: Assess your strengths and resources.
When planning your organization’s fundraising strategy, ask yourself, “Does my team have the expertise and skills needed to carry out our chosen campaign?” Take the time to talk with your nonprofit’s leadership, staff members, and volunteers to examine your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Consider how strong your approach is regarding the following elements:
Prospect research: Do you have dedicated prospect research tools and does your team know how to identify wealth, affinity, and propensity markers using those tools? To learn more about this process, check out the Donorly guide to prospect research.
Marketing: Discuss which marketing channels your organization is most well-versed in, as well as any new channels you’re looking to explore. Identify who will take care of designing your marketing materials if you’re going to create them in-house, or make sure you have the budget for any independent contractors who might take on the design projects.
Event planning: Many campaigns involve events, whether it’s the culminating celebration at the end of a seasonal campaign or a dance-a-thon at the center of your campaign. Designate staff to be in charge of the moving parts of event planning. This includes booking a venue and a caterer, finding entertainment, securing sponsorships and auction items, etc.
No two organizations look alike, from size to skills. Make sure you take the time to remind your team what strengths should be utilized, as well as where you may need to fill in gaps in anticipation of your campaign.
Assessing your organization’s strengths and resources can reveal what further training and instruction are needed or what tools to invest in so you can improve future campaigns.
Step 4: Conduct prospect research.
A crucial part of many fundraising campaigns is prospect research. Prospect research involves uncovering markers that help you determine who out of your donor base may be able and willing to donate a major gift to your campaign.
Since 80% of a nonprofit’s revenue comes from just 20% of its donors, conducting prospect research to discover major donors is essential for meeting the goals of many types of fundraising campaigns. Plus, the core concepts of prospect research can be translated to a broader research strategy in campaigns where you won’t be intentionally pursuing gifts from wealthy individuals.
To leverage prospect research as part of your fundraising strategy, look through your donor database to find supporters with the following three types of markers:
Capacity (Wealth) Markers: First, determine if a donor is able to make a major contribution to your campaign. Capacity markers indicate that your prospect has sufficient financial resources to give a major gift. Look for donors with high-income careers, stock holdings, business affiliations or ownership, and real estate ownership.
Affinity (Warmth) Markers: Along with financial capacity, donors should demonstrate a personal connection to your cause that motivates them to support your mission. Aside from having an existing relationship with your nonprofit, affinity markers include political contributions, past donations and involvement with your nonprofit, and personal connections to your board members or existing major donors.
Propensity (Habit) Markers: Lastly, make sure that prospects have demonstrated their willingness to give to charitable causes like yours. Habit markers, like donations to other nonprofits, board service, and fundraising event attendance, indicate that your prospect is committed to giving their time and money to causes they care about.
In order to accurately identify these indicators in your donor data, make sure you’re keeping it tidy and organized. Good data hygiene will translate into better, more thorough prospect research!
Also note that you can accomplish prospect research in-house using dedicated prospect research tools, but if you want to go more in-depth, professional prospect researchers might prove helpful to your team.
Step 5: Nail down your campaign’s strategic essentials.
In every campaign, there comes a time to hammer out the specifics like budgets, calendars, and gift pyramids. Our step-by-step fundraising strategy template can guide your team in the right direction when it comes to preparing these formal plans, but let’s discuss a few of the key steps in more depth.
Create a campaign budget. Having a general revenue goal is not the same (and not nearly as useful) as outlining the campaign’s finances in an itemized budget. Consider all of your campaign’s expenses to get a clear picture of net revenue, not just gross gains, then break the budget into phases so your team has manageable benchmarks to meet. Use this budget template as a baseline, then tweak it for your specific fundraising campaign:
Finalize a campaign calendar. A strong campaign calendar will bring together essential elements of the planning phase, including a timeline, strategic activities, staff responsibilities, and estimated revenue and expenses per phase. This calendar will guide day-to-day operations and keep your team focused on the campaign’s core goals. Use this sample calendar for inspiration, and notice how it simultaneously provides details and a bird’s eye view of the campaign with the “totals” row:
Create a gift pyramid. A gift pyramid, also known as a gift range chart or gift table, is a description of the number and value of donations your organization needs to meet its fundraising goal. The example below is a major gift pyramid from a capital campaign, in which 60-80% of an organization’s revenue should come from major gifts. The $1,000,000 figure represents the total revenue needed from major donations. The table then breaks down how many gifts at each tier are needed to reach the goal:
While general brainstorming and informal planning sessions are useful to begin a campaign, this step requires the production of specific figures and plans to guide the overarching effort. Creating documents like calendars, budgets, and gift pyramids can be labor-intensive and tedious, but you’ll reap the rewards from having clear, specific plans as your campaign proceeds. Plus, this documentation will give you materials to look back on when your team is assessing the campaign after it is completed or planning a future campaign.
Step 6. Choose and optimize your giving tools.
In order to meet your fundraising goals, you’ll need the right donation tools that make the process of giving to your campaign quick, easy, and convenient for your supporters. After all, the last thing you want is for your supporters to feel inspired to give after seeing your marketing materials or attending a campaign event and then face a barrier to giving when they go to submit their gift.
Here are some tips for choosing and optimizing your giving tools to best support and increase fundraising dollars:
Read reviews of the fundraising platforms you’re considering. You might need a simple online donation form, crowdfunding platform, or online store for selling fundraising products like gourmet popcorn or cookie dough. Check out reviews of these tools on software review websites, or ask your nonprofit colleagues for recommendations.
Pay special attention to your online donation form. In most cases, your donors will give gifts through the online donation form on your organization’s website. Take the time to optimize the donor-facing aspects of your online donation form. Keep it short and sweet, requiring only essential information, like contact information and payment details. If you want to use your form to capture more information about your donors, make sure to mark additional questions as optional. Also, ensure the form is optimized for mobile devices so that donors can give on the go.
Empower your donors to boost their donation amounts by providing a matching gifts tool. Matching gifts are essentially free money for your nonprofit, but not many donors know how to tap into them! These are gifts that are given by a donor’s employer after they donate and submit the necessary gift matching information. Often, an employer will match these donations at a dollar-for-dollar rate, essentially doubling the donor’s donation without them having to pay another cent. Educate your donor base about this opportunity to increase their gift amounts, and provide a matching gifts database on your donation form that they can use to check their eligibility.
Test out your tools before your campaign begins. Recruit a few staff members or volunteers to test out your tools ahead of time. This way you can identify issues and proactively solve them before you turn your tools over to your donors!
Every time a donor submits a gift, you get a little closer to meeting your campaign goal! Make sure you’re not holding your donors back with tools that are difficult to use. Choose your tools carefully before your campaign, and check them periodically throughout the duration of the campaign to make sure nothing needs fine-tuning!
Step 7: Tell your organization’s story.
No matter the size of your nonprofit or the scope of your chosen campaign, you have stories to tell that donors want to hear. Stories have the power to touch people’s hearts and inspire them to contribute to important causes, which makes sharing stories a crucial aspect of your organization’s overall fundraising strategy.
However, it isn’t enough to just rely on the what of your story. You’ll also need to optimize how you tell your organization’s stories, and that’s where the art of storytelling comes in. Here are some tips to help engage your donors with your organization’s narrative no matter what medium you’re using:
Find the human element. By putting a face to your campaign, you’ll provide a “character” that your target audience can become invested in and relate to. For example, instead of talking generally about providing a new library for a local school, hone in on a specific student and highlight how their love of reading can now be nurtured thanks to your donors’ contributions. This strategy will make your stories feel much more personal.
Have a build-up, conflict, and resolution. Every story ever told consists of a build-up, conflict, and resolution. This is because we all like stories where someone encounters a problem and overcomes it. When you tell a story with a build-up, conflict, and resolution, you’re showing how your organization (and donors!) plays a role in solving problems and making positive change.
Lean into the details. Details make stories come alive, especially when a reader can experience your stories with their senses. For example, you might describe the daffodils your volunteers planted in a community garden and what it felt like to work in the chilly morning air. Details like these help your audience feel like they’re right there beside you and encourage them to get involved so they can have similar experiences of their own.
Rely on emotionally evocative visuals. Visuals do things that words can’t. They help you tap into your audience’s emotions and make them feel the importance of your mission or campaign. For example, sharing a picture of a nearly-extinct species of monkey will likely help you communicate the importance of giving a donation more quickly than a written paragraph about the animal.
As you fine-tune your storytelling techniques, remember that it’s imperative to tell stories that your donor base (or specific donor segments) will respond to the best. This might mean, for example, that you tell different stories for those who are involved in your volunteer program than you do for new donors. You will also need to consider the medium through which you deliver your stories, which is where marketing comes in.
Step 8: Create targeted marketing materials.
Once you’ve written your stories, plan your organization’s campaign marketing strategy. A multi-channel approach combining digital and print content will likely reach the widest audience and lead to better results.
As you consider the various marketing options at your disposal, remember to segment your donor base and customize appeals as much as possible. Targeting different segments based on their preferred communication method, age, and/or level of involvement will increase the likelihood that they’ll respond positively to your message. The more a donor feels like they’re being personally addressed, the more likely they are to give.
To kickstart your promotional efforts, create a library of campaign marketing collateral that includes multiple of the following:
Campaign Style Guide
Ensure any collateral your team creates for your fundraising strategy sticks to the same theme by creating a style guide. This will make your materials seem cohesive, directly strengthening your brand image. As part of your style guide, include elements like:
Your campaign logo. Designing a logo specifically for your campaign will help the initiative stand out and create a unique identity for your campaign. It can easily be added to ads, flyers, social media, and other outlets to increase campaign awareness.
Color palette. Choose a handful of colors to tie to your campaign. These should align with your overall branding and elicit the appropriate emotions connected to your campaign.
Fonts. Pick visually appealing fonts that align with your campaign’s tone. Similar to colors, fonts should be consistent with your nonprofit’s existing branding. They should also be legible and accessible to all users.
By creating a memorable visual identity for your fundraising strategy, your nonprofit can build a stronger connection with your audience and ultimately drive them to take action.
Campaign Page or Microsite
As part of your fundraising strategy, you’ll need a webpage or microsite to drive traffic to across your campaign outreach. A campaign page or microsite focuses solely on promoting a specific initiative and should include elements like:
Specific calls to action
Details about the campaign
Event registration or donation details
A well-designed webpage or microsite can be highly impactful in raising awareness and funds for your event. Plus, it acts as a catch-all resource for your campaign, giving supporters a single source of information.
Social Media Posts
You can’t deny social media’s incredible influence on the nonprofit sector. For any type of campaign, the right social platforms can supercharge your promotional efforts. After all, the share button can be a powerful tool for connecting you with new prospects.
Here are a few ways you can tap into the benefits of social media outreach:
Create a hashtag that your nonprofit and supporters can use.
Lean into visual storytelling by sharing photos, videos, and infographics related to your campaign that grab users’ attention.
Partner with influencers who have followings that align with your target audience.
Engage with users by responding to comments on your campaign posts, and share user-generated content to build a sense of community.
Your campaign and fundraising strategy altogether stand to gain a lot of exposure by using social media. Pay attention to the platforms your supporters actively use, so you can invest your efforts into the channels that will receive the most engagement.
Digital Ads
Paid advertising for nonprofits can be a powerful tool for promoting campaigns and reaching wider audiences online. When crafting your fundraising strategy, consider these two main types of digital ads:
Google Ads: Once you’ve developed your campaign page or microsite, promote it to people searching related keywords on Google. As the world’s most popular search engine, Google enables you to put your campaign in front of prospects who are likely to support your efforts. Believe it or not, nonprofits can even leverage paid advertising to promote their campaigns on Google for free with the Google Ad Grant program.
Social media ads: Run ads on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to boost awareness of your campaign. Depending on the platform, you might incorporate images, videos, and text that explain your campaign and encourage users to take action.
Especially when you leverage targeting features to narrow your audience, ads have the ability to connect you with motivated prospects who are likely to support your campaigns. However, you may need to turn to advertising experts like Google Grant managers to minimize the learning curve and leverage more advanced techniques.
Press Releases
Press releases are a must for generating media coverage and raising awareness for your campaigns. Typically written in a journalistic style, your press release can be distributed to news outlets and other media sources to:
Announce your campaign’s launch
Share key details about your campaign
Provide quotes from key spokespeople at your organization
When well-written and strategically distributed, your press release can boost media coverage and public awareness of your campaign. In turn, you’ll directly increase engagement and overall mission support, making it a crucial part of your fundraising strategy.
Project Renderings
If your project will fund new infrastructure, promote your campaign by sharing project renderings. This will help your supporters visualize the proposed design, bringing your project to life.
Often created by architects or designers, project renderings can be used in your marketing materials and presentations to communicate the scope and potential impact of your project. They work particularly well for capital campaigns and major infrastructure projects, where written or verbal descriptions won’t communicate your goal clearly.
Campaign Brochure
As a classic form of nonprofit marketing, a campaign brochure is printed marketing collateral used to provide a comprehensive overview of your campaign’s goals and impact. A well-organized brochure typically includes:
Images
Statistics
A timeline for project completion
Calls to action
Great for repurposing across multiple outlets, a well-designed brochure can effectively convey your organization’s project in a tangible, easily digestible format. This makes it a must for your fundraising strategy for large projects.
Documentation
Having thorough documentation shows that your nonprofit is serious about making a difference with your fundraising efforts. A few key documents you can use to promote your campaign include:
A case for support document. Create a comprehensive, persuasive document that outlines why donors should support your campaign. Be sure to include information about your mission and potential impact, as well as specific campaign details regarding your objectives and how donations will help achieve those goals.
Phone and text scripts. If your campaign relies on phone-based outreach, create some phone and text scripts. For example, let’s say you’re hosting a peer-to-peer campaign. In this case, supporters can easily leverage scripts and templates to drive friends and families to their fundraising pages.
Email and social media templates. If you want to promote your campaign on digital platforms, get ahead of the game and create some email and social media templates. Having templates ready to go simplifies your nonprofit’s digital marketing since anyone can easily reference them to promote your fundraiser.
By creating clear documents and templates, your nonprofit can effectively market your campaigns, increase awareness, and encourage donations.
Step 9. Make a plan for thanking and stewarding donors.
It’s critical to remember that meeting your fundraising goal is not the only objective of your upcoming fundraising campaign. In fact, fundraising dollars should always play second fiddle to the donors who give them. You’ll need to continue to nurture your donor relationships to maintain the momentum created by your campaign. This is why we recommend making a plan for thanking and stewarding your donors after the campaign ends.
Outline a donor stewardship plan that includes:
Thanking donors right after your campaign ends. Donor appreciation should be much more than an afterthought. Consider a variety of donor appreciation strategies and determine what kind of thank-you message would resonate best with your donors. Then, send them immediately after the campaign ends.
Using different appreciation strategies based on donor segments. Segment your donor base into groups and try a few different strategies for people with common characteristics or preferences. For example, your major donors may find gift baskets or personal phone calls more appealing as a token of appreciation, while mid-sized donors may appreciate branded merchandise and a short thank-you note the most.
Showcasing impact to every donor. Donors don’t give blindly—they want to know how their donations contributed to your cause. In fact, 97% of donors say that creating impact is one of their top reasons for giving. To maintain relationships and inspire donors to give again in the future, make sure to let them know how their personal donations helped. Share concrete numbers and examples to make it crystal-clear.
After this initial round of stewardship, continue to actively reach out to your donors in between campaigns. Get to know them, update them on your programs, and invite them to engage with your nonprofit in different ways, like volunteering. As you make your donors feel seen and appreciated as people, you’ll create a community of support that can help further your mission for years to come!
Step 10: Streamline your fundraising strategy into a campaign roadmap.
After you’ve worked with your team to produce all of the documents and strategies we’ve discussed so far, it’s time to aggregate these materials into a campaign roadmap that reflects your overall fundraising strategy.
This roadmap will be the guiding force behind your campaign. Whenever you’re faced with a tough decision or challenge during your fundraising efforts, return to your roadmap for valuable insights and guidance. A centralized roadmap with clearly organized sections for each strategic element will be essential once things are underway.
A comprehensive campaign roadmap should include the following elements:
Past performance data
Goals and guidelines
Deadline or timeframe
Prospect research
Budgets, calendars, and gift pyramids
Campaign narratives
Marketing collateral and timeline
Donor appreciation and stewardship plans
With your goals, objectives, and deliverables assembled alongside a timeline, you’ll get a cohesive picture of the entire campaign and fundraising strategy. Plus, this helpful document will be accessible to your whole organization, making sure everyone remains on the same page throughout your effort.
Step 11: Choose and track specific fundraising campaign KPIs.
Next to strengthened donor relationships and donations, one of the most important outcomes of a fundraising campaign is the valuable insight you can draw from engagement metrics.
Are you on track to reach your fundraiser’s financial goal? Do your donors prefer email or direct mail as channels for giving? Are you acquiring donors at a rate that can sustain your organization long-term? Is your donor acquisition cost suffering from a new marketing strategy you implemented? Without concrete evidence to answer these and many other questions about your organization’s financial health, your team will be left in the dark.
For every fundraising campaign, choose KPIs that report on progress toward your nonprofit’s specific goals. For example, if one of the goals you established in Step Two of this guide was to acquire 300 new donors, it’s essential that you follow this number throughout the campaign to evaluate your organization’s success.
KPIs can provide precious insights about your nonprofit’s donors and outreach strategies, so be sure you have the data analysis and reporting capabilities to not only track these figures but also to communicate them to your team in a digestible way. A professional-grade database or CRM platform is a must for organizations that want to benefit from these data insights.
Step 12: Determine future improvements for your fundraising strategy.
As you track campaign KPIs and experience the ups and downs of your campaign, you’ll surely make observations along the way. Keep track of your experiences in real-time so you can return to them later. Nonprofit professionals often get so wrapped up in their current projects that they forget to take the big picture into account. Maintain a broad perspective by writing down observations, such as:
What duties individual team members are excelling in
What marketing materials and communication methods are performing the best
What is going well overall and what isn’t
What you would do differently for a similar campaign in the future
If you make an observation you want to remember for a future campaign, make sure to record it. This will help you to enhance future fundraising strategies and campaigns in a myriad of ways, including prospect research, staff capacity, donor communications, marketing channels, and more.
Additional Strategic Fundraising Resources
While the planning period before a campaign may feel time-intensive, a detailed fundraising strategy is vital for any successful campaign.
If you want help getting your fundraising strategy off the ground, consider working with fundraising consultants at Donorly. While hiring an outside consultant does represent a new expense, you’ll see a return on your investment as you leverage their advice to launch successful campaigns. Plus, your team can dedicate more time to valuable cultivation efforts while your consultant provides expertise on fundraising strategies, best practices, and technical undertakings like prospect research.
Be sure to check out these additional resources, too:
Free Step-by-Step Fundraising Plan Template for Nonprofits. Use our free, comprehensive fundraising plan template to map out strategic fundraising essentials like your budget, campaign timeline, and donor stewardship strategy.
Prospect Research: Everything Nonprofits Need to Know. Want more insight into the process of finding major donors for your campaign? Learn how to get started, what tools to use, and who can help you with prospect research in this guide.
How to Start a Nonprofit Organization: A Step-by-Step Guide. Thinking of starting your own nonprofit? Follow the steps in this guide to set your organization up for success.
