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How To Create an Integrated Fundraising Plan And Leverage Your Organization’s Case For Need

By Susan Whitmore

Does your nonprofit organization have a plan for keeping requests for funding in the pipeline year-round? Do you know who your most recent donors are, how much they gave, and for what initiative?

By following a few, simple steps, there’s an easy way to organize your development efforts so that current revenue streams can be retained and new revenue streams identified. The result is steady, philanthropic support over time.

Six steps to success:

1.   Delineate your organization’s recent major donor history.
Major donors include corporate sponsors, private and public foundations, and individuals providing funding over $5,000 in the last two to three years. If you don’t have a current database that delineates who these folks are, how much they gave, and how the funds were used – create one. Go through your development files and accounting records and track the record in a report. This is a first, crucial step that will help you avoid duplicate requests and insure that you provide adequate thanks for previous funding when making another request.

2.   Identify your organization’s three major areas of need.
Nonprofit’s needs vary but usually fall within three categories: Operations (including staff), program costs, and capital (including technology and infrastructure). Use your strategic plan as a guide (that is, what are your marching orders for the next few years?) or brainstorm with your board and staff to identify the most critical areas of need. This is the first step in creating a case for need, or case statement. Limit areas of need from one to three.

3.   Create a case statement.
The case statement will be your template for making requests to foundations and potential donors. The case statement can be adapted to different foundation application guidelines, if necessary. The case statement should include:

  • Your nonprofit organization’s mission, vision, and brief history
  • The three current areas of need (why you have the need and who will be served?)
  • How each initiative will be implemented (include measurable outcomes)
  • Fiscal need associated with each
  • Sustainability and leadership (your nonprofit’s capacity to lead and what your plan is for sustainability over time)
  • How to make a gift

Once the case statement is complete, your organization’s governing board should approve it or recommend changes.

4.   Research potential area, regional and national donors.
The quickest and easiest way to find local, regional and national foundations with areas of interest in alignment with yours is to do an Internet search. If you are starting from scratch, a good place to look is Foundations.org (www. foundations.org) that lists links to over 85 private and corporate foundations and 40 community foundations across the United States. Each foundation website gives detail regarding current RFPs (Requests for Proposals), areas of interest, and application guidelines. There are many other foundation search engines as well.

A good match for a potential donor is one that has a mission and areas of interest in alignment with yours. Check they types of gifts they make and whether they have any limitations on giving. Review their list of recent gifts – who did they give to, for what, and how much? If they have a history of giving to organizations in alignment with yours, you may have a good prospect.

5.   Create an integrated fundraising plan.
Using the information you have gathered – checking for duplication with your recent major donor report – create a chart that will help you keep track of requests over time – an integrated fundraising plan. The chart should include the following columns:

  • Foundation name, address and contact information
  • Areas of matching interest and purpose
  • Application information and deadlines
  • List of foundation officers, trustees, or board members
  • A column recommending the area of your request, amount, and date for submission
  • A “status” column which you update as you go – noting when requests went in, who is tracking them, follow up visits, and ultimately whether the request was approved or denied

The fundraising plan should be disseminated among board members for review and approval. Board members can check each foundation’s board list to see if they have any personal contacts. Ideally, you can match a board member with each foundation. Working as a team with the executive director or development staff, the board member can help write the cover letter, make phone contact and/or attend follow up visits.

It is important to spread your proposal submission dates out over time, so you have adequate time to adapt the case statement, write the cover letter, and appropriately follow up with site visits and/or phone conferences.

6.   Prepare proposals according to schedule.
In many cases, submission of your case statement with a cover letter will adequately meet the foundation’s application guidelines. Your cover letter should indicate clearly which area of need you are asking them to help fund. In other cases, you will need to adapt your case statement to the foundation’s format; however you should be able to cut and paste sections from your original document with relative ease.

Be sure to follow up submission of your proposal with a phone call in a week or two – just to make sure they got the proposal and to see if they have any immediate requests. You will probably be able to get a sense of when the proposal will be reviewed as well. And of course, invite them for a site visit, or ask if you can come to them.

Bill Moran, The Moran Company, specializes in nonprofit executive searches
for executive directors, fundraising staff and other top nonprofit leadership.
www.morancompany.com

© 2008 The Moran Company
“We find great nonprofit executives”

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