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.
We will start by ascertaining the caller's professional and personal history, any relevant local political information, and information on organizations that might support or oppose.
We suggest you review your finance plan quarterly, as well as 60 days and now 30 days before the election.
We use a combination of methods to set your financial goal.
We begin with the "last cycle" method. That's where we look at what happened last time, and extrapolate from there. If your organization raised $1M last year, we can usually anticipate that you'll do a little bit better than that this year. Often we use the stock market or philanthropic databases to influence this range.
Similarly, if you're running a political campaign we look at the last person to run for the seat. How did they do? What did they do poorly? What's changed?
The "budget first" method relies on the immediate needs of the organization and extrapolates backwards to figure out the amount of money needed. This is the least accurate method, but sometimes it's necessary (especially for capital campaigns or political campaigns that challenge an incumbent).
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.
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.
15-20% of total fundraising costs will be consultants and technology
5% of face-to-face fundraising totals will be cost
1% of telephone fundraising totals will be cost
25% of event fundraising totals will be cost
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
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100% of cold telemarketing fundraising totals will be cost
35% resolicit telemarketing fundraising totals will be cost
1% of email resolicit fundraising totals will be cost