A great fundraising team is worth their weight in gold! Good fundraising will provide a return on investment far beyond anything you will achieve in traded income, so building the right team is essential for any fundraising campaign aimed at generating substantial support and achieving ambitious goals.
A well-organised and motivated team can significantly amplify your efforts, reaching a broader audience and raising more funds than an individual CEO/Fundraiser could do alone.
In this blog, I’ll suggest what investments you can make to build your fundraising function from scratch. We’ll also talk through the mechanics of actually assembling and managing an effective fundraising team.
Define your purpose and goals
Before you start building your team, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of the purpose of your fundraising efforts and the specific goals you aim to achieve. This clarity will help you communicate your mission effectively and attract like-minded individuals to join your cause.
Usually though, there are three fundamental aims of any fundraising function:
- Building your database – whether this be through acquiring more individuals, corporates or trusts.
- Building your relationships – so they move beyond the transactional. This ensures your existing supporters will stay with you and give more to your mission.
- Ensuring you have the optimal asset allocation – this is about the balance between all your different fundraising programmes to ensure you’re getting the very best return on your fundraising budget over a given time period.
Recruiting your golden team
- Identify key roles
If you’re starting a fundraising programme from scratch, you will need to think about the timeframes that different income streams take to deliver, as well as what is going to work best for your cause. Here are some ideas that have proven to be successful in many of the small charities we have worked with:
📌 Start with a freelancer/consultant who specialises in trust and foundations. Initially you’ll only need them to work 2 – 3 days a month and you can replace them with a permanent member of staff later on.
📌Next, bring on a senior and a junior fundraising staff member to focus on corporate fundraising, major donors and community fundraising. The former can focus on the major donors and corporates and the latter on the community fundraising. Avoid organising your own events, where possible. Instead, provide guidance and systems so your supporters can engage in third-party events. The ROI will be much better.
📌In Year 2 or 3, you’ll need someone to start building your database through direct marketing. If you don’t build your database, then you won’t have a growing pool of major donor and legacy prospects.
📌Whilst you won’t have someone solely focused on this area initially, start promoting gifts in Wills right now, everywhere! At the very least, get some wording together for prospective legators and in Year 1, get yourself a simple legacy booklet. You want to be inspiring potential legacy donors everywhere as a large percentage usually come from outside your database.
- Choose strong team members
The most important characteristic for any fundraiser is their ability to raise funds i.e. their results. So, make sure you hire somebody who has a track record of great results where they can demonstrate that they were the chief architect of those results.
After that, select individuals who are passionate about the cause as well as closely matching the person specification for the role. Personal recommendations and professional networks can be great resources for finding potential team members.
- Conduct interviews
Treat the recruitment process as you would for any professional team. Conduct interviews to understand each candidate’s motivations, skills, and how they can contribute to the team. Again, focus on drilling into their results and how they achieved them. This step ensures you are bringing on board individuals who are great at their job, genuinely committed to the cause, and can work well with others.
Create your fundraising strategy
Developing an effective fundraising strategy is crucial for any organisation looking to secure resources and support for its cause. A well-structured strategy not only outlines your fundraising goals but also details the methods and channels through which you will achieve them.
- Set clear goals
Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your fundraising campaign. This will include a target amount to raise, activity measurements, or specific outreach milestones to achieve.
- Develop a detailed plan
Create a comprehensive business plan outlining the steps needed to achieve your goals. This should include timelines, resource allocation, and a communication strategy. Ensure your plan is flexible enough to adapt to unexpected challenges or opportunities.
- Assign tasks
Break down the plan into actionable tasks and assign these to team members according to their roles. Regular check-ins and progress updates will help keep everyone on track and address any issues promptly.
Create the optimal environment for success
- Develop open and clear communication
This is vital so that staff are not only clear about what is going on in the organisation and why, but also so that together you can have the widest and freest possible discussion about the best way forward for the organisation. Have regular monthly team meetings and weekly email activity updates from each member of the team. Ensure you have regular fortnightly 121’s with your direct reports as well as away days and planning meetings.
- Develop clear systems and guidelines
This is vital so staff know how things should be done and what’s expected of them. Ensure every team member has their own business plan with strategies and related actions and KPI’s, as well as developing key policies and procedures for major activities.
- Give staff ownership of their work and their workplace
This allows each team member to be a master of their own destiny which is always motivating, as well as enabling them to build a workplace which is as motivating to them as possible. Also, ensure that you give each staff member as much autonomy as you think they can handle and, where appropriate, regularly open up key issues for staff participation.
- Create a culture of success
This is where you focus most of your attention – on what people have done right and reward them appropriately. Don’t shy away from recognising failure but deal with it promptly and see what you can learn from it. Then move on.
- Create a workplace of integrity and inclusion
Ensure that every team member is valued and heard and also make your team feel safe and respected coming to work. Lead by example and encourage professional and supportive behaviour of all your team.
Evaluate and adjust
- Monitor Progress
Regularly review the progress of your fundraising strategy against the key objectives and key performance indicators you set. This should be done on a monthly basis.
- Gather Feedback
Collect feedback from team members, donors, and event participants to understand what worked well and what could be improved. This feedback is invaluable for refining your strategy and enhancing future campaigns.
- Adapt and Improve
Based on your evaluations and feedback, make necessary adjustments to your strategy. Flexibility and a willingness to adapt are crucial for overcoming challenges and achieving long-term success.
Finally…
I’m always surprised how infrequently CEOs and senior leaders thank their fundraising teams. Being a fundraiser is a tough job! There’s unrelenting pressure to bring in income, often coupled with unrealistic expectations from non-fundraisers inside the organisation. It’s so simple but very effective if you want to retain great people. We’re all human and like to be praised now and then.
I’m Jane and I help fundraising leaders build successful fundraising and philanthropy programmes.
If you want to know more, email me on jane@philanthropytogether.co.uk or call on +44 (0) 7927 145572.
