Funding Advice Bureau 


SYFAB guide to... 

Developing a fundraising strategy 



A fundraising strategy is any kind of plan for how you will 
raise money to do something specific. It could be just a 
plan for raising money for one particular project or activity, 
but more likely, it refers to a plan for raising all the money 
your organisation will need over the coming year. 

In this guide, we’ll run through the main steps involved 
in putting together a simple fundraising strategy for 
your organisation. 

Why have a fundraising strategy? 

Planning out the fundraising tasks you need to do is all 
part of general organisational planning in the not-for-profi t 
sector. It’s important to plan well in order to make sure that 
your work meets its aims and objectives, and that you have 
the resources you need to carry out your activities. It may 
seem like a lot of extra work to produce your fundraising 
strategy when there are urgent tasks to do today, but 
producing and using your fundraising strategy will save you 
a lot of time in the future. Here are some reasons why: 

Firstly, when you write the strategy, you will need to take 
time out to plan what your organisation wants to do in the 
future. That may sound obvious but it’s something that lots 
of groups don’t do. Without a plan for your future, it’s easy 
to get a bit lost and end up doing activities that don’t fi t in 
with your original aims. 

Secondly, planning your future activities will mean that 
you look at your organisation as a whole, as well as 
the individual projects that make it up and how they fi t 
together. Again, this is something that many groups forget 
to do and it can have a negative effect on the development 
of your organisation. Looking at the bigger picture might 
also help you to identify new ways of raising money for your 
work. For example if you’ve always relied on grants, you 
might decide to try and sell some of your services. 

Thirdly, writing the strategy will help you to prioritise your 
funding needs and decide which are the most pressing and 
it will make your fundraising less daunting by breaking it 
down into manageable tasks. 

And finally, once you have the strategy, you can use it 
to refer back to and check your fundraising against the 
original plan. It will keep you focussed. 

What’s in a fundraising strategy? 

Your funding strategy effectively sets out the fundraising 
tasks that your organisation will need to complete, who will 
do them and when they will do them. If you are fundraising 
for a small organisation, your strategy might be very simple 
indeed, and may even just cover one project or activity. 
If your organisation grows and you take on more projects 
and activities, your fundraising will have to get more 
sophisticated, and so too will your planning. 

When we describe a fundraising strategy, we’re talking 
about your plan for all of your organisation’s fundraising 
work over the next year. By the end of this planning 
process, you are looking to produce an action plan for 
how you will achieve your fundraising target for the year, 
setting out who will do what by when. 

Here’s what you need to cover in your funding strategy: 

1. Your aims and objectives for the coming year – details of 
the overall purpose of your organisation and your work, 
and what you are trying to achieve. 
2. The activities you intend to carry out over the year with 
details of the specific pieces of work you will do over the 
year – what you will deliver, where, when and to whom. 
3. Your organisation’s budget for the coming year, showing 
the planned costs of doing your work over the year. 
4. Details of the funding you currently have in place, what it 
pays for and how long it will last. 
5. Details of possible approaches you could take to 
packaging your work into projects, or separate items 
to fundraise for. 
6. Details of the amount of funding you will need to raise 
for each project or item. 
7. A summary of the possible funding sources you could 
approach for each, along with details of any impending 
deadlines or crtieria to you need to be aware of. 
8. Details of the resources you have available to carry 
out your fundraising work – who will be able to do 
the fundraising tasks and how much time they have 
available to do it. 
9. An action plan showing the tasks you need to complete, 
who is responsible for each, and the deadline for each. 
Your organisation may already have some of this 
information in other plans and documents, such as 
a business plan or operational plan. If so, you don’t 
need to repeat all of that in a separate funding strategy. 
The important thing is to make sure all your planning is 
joined-up so that the fundraising tasks you have set match 
up with the operational plans and the financial plans of 
your organisation. 

Using your fundraising strategy 

Once you’ve got a fundraising strategy written, the hard 
work really begins. Any strategy is only worth having if you 
implement it – your organisation needs to have measures 
in place to make sure that the work gets done on time, and 
to adjust the plan over time. So you should ensure that 
your strategy is circulated to your committee, and that you 
have regular updates and reports on your progress, with 
milestones and targets to measure against, and a process 
for reviewing and updating your strategic planning’ as 
necessary. 

Further reading 

The Complete Fundraising Handbook 
Nina Botting & Michael Norton 

The Complete Guide to Business and Strategic Planning 
Alan Lawrie 

Fundraising Strategy 
Redmond Mullin 

Available from Directory of Social Change (DSC) and other 
book sellers and possibly your local library too. 

Directory of Social Change 
Tel: 0845 077 7707 
Website: www.dsc.org.uk 



South Yorkshire Funding 
Advice Bureau 
The Workstation 
15 Paternoster Row 
Sheffi eld S1 2BX 

Tel: 0114 249 4343 
Email: enquiries@syfab.org.uk 
Website: www.syfab.org.uk 


We can provide this information in other formats on 
request. Please get in touch to discuss your needs. 

Our information is produced for local community and voluntary 
groups. No permission is needed for limited reproduction if SYFAB 
is acknowledged. 
Large scale reproduction or inclusion in publications for sale 
must have written permission from SYFAB. 

SYFAB welcomes your comments and criticism. You can 
talk to any member of staff, or contact us by post, phone, 
fax or email. 

Registered Charity No: 1061118 
Reg. Company No: 3030641 

© SYFAB 2003 
All rights reserved. Version 1