Ensuring Success
Using an uncertain time to create certainty for the future
Are you feeling uncertain about how the COVID-19 fiscal crisis will impact your organization’s financial security? If so, you’re not alone.
At times like this, however, non-profits are needed more than ever. The people and communities you serve will need your support and your services more than ever this year, so this is not a time to be led by fear, but to drive your fundraising with confidence and certainty.
Over the next two weeks, I will post a series of blogs helping to guide you and your team through strategic exercises to ensure your fundraising success, and the success of your mission.
While you’re unable to travel, and donor visits are virtual, it’s time to focus on what’s most important and to create a pathway to success.
Table of Gifts: Your clear pathway to success
The first step to fundraising success is to dust off and update your Table of Gifts & Donor Pipeline. These will be your guiding light to reach your financial goals. If you have a table of gifts, now is the time to review and update with clear, realistic ask amounts for your donors. If you don’t, I will show you exactly how to create one!
Step 1: Clarify your revenue goal. This can be an annual revenue goal or a multi-year campaign goal. Success is only possible if you begin with the end in mind, so do not skip this step!
Step 2: You should have a pipeline or portfolio report listing each of your donors, their stage (discovery, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship), your intended ask amount, and ask date. I also like to include past giving data to help inform moves strategies and ask plans, as well as a place to note my next steps. If you don’t already have these details in one place, email me at hollisconsulting@icloud.com, and I will send you a sample!
Step 3: Create your Table of Gifts. This will outline exactly how many donors you will need (by giving level) to reach your financial goals. You and your fundraising team can play around with the Table of Gifts until it closely matches the donors in your pipeline.
Sample Table of Gifts can be found in the full article here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piperhollis/ or you can email me at hollisconsulting@icloud.com for a sample.
As you populate your actual prospect counts from your pipeline, however, you must adapt to more closely match your actual pipeline.
Note: As a rule of thumb, for larger donations you will need five prospects for each gift needed. For smaller donations, I use a multiplier of three.
These documents are paramount to success, and now is a perfect time to update them to match your fundraising pipeline. Once updated, these will be used to develop your fundraising strategy to meet your revenue goals, and will eliminate fear!
Look for next week’s blog, where we will take the next steps in planning for financial success despite uncertain times.