Fundraising plans

Moving from the expense side of the ledger to the income side, the main takeaway about generating revenue for a nonprofit start-up is that it needs to be carefully planned in advance. Even if the details change (and they will because you'll be carefully monitoring your progress each month to be sure that your projections are, in fact, accurate), at least you are starting from the position of having a plan to diverge from in the first place. When paired with a 12-month calendar based on your fiscal year, the fundraising plan helps you break down your overall revenue goal into specific and more manageable (bite-sized) discrete chunks of work. Each "chunk" deserves its own timeline, strategy, and evaluation criteria... having fun yet?

From this morning's class in Providence, here's a back-of-the-envelope sketch of how you might begin to project the first two years of a fundraising plan for a new initiative.