Seeing as a majority of my clients hire me to either help them with strategic planning or fundraising, I often think about the connection between the two topics.
Strategic planning can require significant resources — both time and money. Some organizations have an initial struggle to ensure they have sufficient resources to spend on strategic planning.
Fortunately, going through the strategic planning process can also be a means of raising additional resources.
Read on for ideas for how to raise money before, during, and after a strategic planning process.
Pre-Strategic Planning
Are there funders – either institutional or individual – who can be approached about funding the planning process without it undercutting other asks of them?
Even if you have enough reserves to simply move forward with planning without dedicated funding, it’s worth thinking about this as it would free up those funds for something else.
In my experience, donors who’ll fund your strategic planning are those who’ve already made multiple donations/grants and with whom you have a trust relationship where you can discuss the value of strategic planning in the context of challenges you face organizationally.
What value to pitch to specific donors may vary:
- The importance of adapting your work to a changing lay of the land.
- The importance of aligning your work with partners/allies.
- The importance of getting the team aligned around a few big goals and how to accomplish them.
During Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning presents real opportunities to cultivate your relationship with your supporters. There’s an old adage, if you want money, ask for advice.
Many strategic planning processes involve some sort of interview process for stakeholders.
You should think consciously about whether some major donors and/or institutional funders should be added into the process as a means of cultivating their support for the organization.
This may increase the cost in time and dollars of your process, but with a big potential pay-off afterwards. I’ve heard enough stories from Executive Directors who’ve told me that people I’ve interviewed subsequently made big year-end donations to feel like the cultivation from planning paid off.
Cultivation shouldn’t stop with major donors. If your organization has a grassroots constituency, it can reach via email, consider an online survey. I’ve also had a client have me facilitate small-group focus groups with volunteers (who’re almost always donors). Ask some questions to ascertain what your supporters want you to prioritize, while also learning things about them that could be useful for future fundraising. Beyond what you learn, just the process of asking for their input will help cement their sense of belonging with your organization.
After Strategic Planning
The most obvious, and the one most people think about, is using the finished plan to sell donors on funding whatever is “new” in the plan. Usually this involves creating a short two-page summary of the plan and using it with selected major donors and foundations. For some donors who’re very engaged, it may involve sharing the plan in full.
You can target donors with asks to fund specific investments called for in your plan. For example: one of my past clients determined in strategic planning they needed to super-size their communications efforts, with major investments in upgraded website, more staff time for social media, consulting help, etc. They presented an investment budget related to these items to a few donors who were inspired to help.
I’ve also worked with groups who’ve successfully articulated via their strategic plan how significant advances in their mission could be accomplished by doubling their budget over 5 years. And then they’ve gone out and secured donations by talking in more general terms about what the plan will help them accomplish if funded.
Your ideas?
If you have other ways you’ve used strategic planning to bolster fundraising, please share them!
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