Maier Anderson will craft a fundraising plan that's designed to meet your needs. You will see this in your personal Notion, but here's some insight into how we do it.

Foundations of the plan

If a nonprofit is fairly new, we will start by ascertaining the founder's professional and personal history and information on organizations that might be allies of the new nonprofit.

If a nonprofit is already well-established, we will explore the avenues above, but in addition dive deep into all the previous donors to the organization (whether active or inactive.)

Setting Goals

We use a combination of methods to set your financial goal.

Project Based

If you are fundraising for a specific project or capital campaign (buying a building, retrofitting a facility, launch a new after-school program) It is likely your organization has already created or commission estimates for the project. If not, we are happy to help.

Rolodex Method or General Fund Based

If you are looking to start a nonprofit, or grow your existing one with the goal of expanding your entire mission, we can make reasonable projections about your ability to raise money based on your initial prospect list. By projecting out from your estimated totals, we can plan for your long-term future.

Quarterly Goals

Each quarter's goals should be adjusted based on known statistics about the willingness of donors to give (usually dictated around tax season). See this graph from DonorPerfect for more information:

Fundraising Costs

When fundraising you will run into certain fundraising costs, that is, money you need to spend in order to solicit donations. This includes things like the cost of an email service, database subscriptions, consultants, postage, or just the cost of buying a prospective donor a coffee when you meet. Although they are usually small, they can add up quickly. Here's what we anticipate.

  1. 15-20% of total fundraising costs will be consultants and technology

  2. 5% of face-to-face fundraising totals will be cost

  3. 1% of telephone fundraising totals will be cost

  4. 25% of event fundraising totals will be cost

  5. 100% of cold mail fundraising totals will be cost

    <aside> 💡 Ouch! That stinks. So why do it? Only 50% of resolicit mail fundraising totals will be cost

    </aside>

  6. 100% of cold telemarketing fundraising totals will be cost

  7. 35% resolicit telemarketing fundraising totals will be cost

  8. 1% of email resolicit fundraising totals will be cost