Bloomerang_Forecasting Your Fundraising Revenue 2024.pptx.pdf

Forecasting your 2024 Fundraising Revenue
2023 Fundraising For The Future
1

About Stephanie Sample
20+ years in the nonprofit sector
Find me online:
Fundraisingforthefuture.com
Linked In
Fundraising For The Future 2023
2

The Answer Imperative
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…
We’re standing on one foot, impatiently
waiting for the shortcut, the method, the
guarantee. Skip the preamble and the
analysis- what’s your take? Don’t talk to
me about genre and method and history.
No time for that. What are we supposed to
do right now. Perhaps the reason we’re
struggling along the way, we forgot to
focus on the questions instead. More
answers are only going to insulate us
from the questions we actually need to be
focusing on.”
-Seth Godin.
3

Introduction
• Business Growth facilitated by business plans
• Who am I? Where can you find me?
• I am a teacher by trade.
• I am a business development consultant.
• You can find me consulting in person in
Albuquerque, New Mexico
• You can find me teaching at Grantstation, the
University of New Mexico Anderson School of
Management, Eastern Grant Forum, Southern
Grant Forum, Western Grant Forum, the
Association of Consultants to Nonprofits and
the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
• What qualifies me to present?
• Leading others through financial projections
• Studying business planning through the Profit
First model
• Actively using business plans as a growth tool
• Creating successful business plans and
fundraising projections for 1mil.+
organizations
4

Introduction
• What am I interested in?
• Future’s Thinking
• Fiscal Sustainability
• Why nonprofits don’t budget for surplus
• Organizational culture around goal setting
• What led me to present this?
• The desire to change the way organizations look at the
bottom line
• An urgency around the need for nonprofits to take
agency in their fundraising
• What are we going to learn/investigate today?
• How a fundraising plan can project for a profit
• How a fundraising plan can be grounded in reality and
not driven by pressures from the board or staff
• How existing activities can be leveraged to increase
revenue
2023 Fundraising For The Future 5

FFTF Growth Timeline
• In 2016: Sample launched her independent grant writing business, Sample
Consulting Studio (SCS).
• In 2018: Sample began subcontracting projects to grant writers and
managing a small team.
• In 2019: SCS grew to include 2 subcontractors with 5+ grant writing projects
monthly.
• In 2020, after studying Futures Thinking at the Institute For The Future,
Sample rebranded her business to Fundraising for The Future and began
offering business development services.
• In 2021, FFTF grew to a team of 4 serving nonprofit and for-profit clients
across New Mexico and the United States with grant writing and business
plan development healthy 6 figure business with a calculated profit margin
and clear business goals.
• In 2022, Sample planned for a sabbatical in 2023, and created a business plan
for an interim director. In 2023, Sample hired and trained an interim.
• In Q3 2023-Q2 2024, Sample is taking a 5-month sabbatical to research,
write and selectively teach.

Why Fundraising Plans Are Important
Fundraising Budgets vs. Fundraising Plans
• A budget connotes restriction, while a plan
provides a framework that can be expansive.
• Tip: Building out your fundraising plan will help you
know how much energy and time you will spend on
fundraising activities in each quarter and what your
expected return will be.
• Pro Tip: Having objective criteria for new fundraising
activities will help you appraise proposals and ideas in
order to determine quickly whether or not the ROI is
signiﬁcant enough to undertake.
7

Why Fundraising Plans Are Important
• Your Fundraising Team will save time and
energy thinking in advance about:
• Major donor asks and timing
• Events and ﬁnancial goals for events
• Fundraising Communications
• Your Fundraising Team will have a
framework for vetting new fundraising ideas
• Considering staff time and tempo
• Mapping new projects into existing project
spaces
8

2024 Revenue Forecasting
• What are your Budget Assumptions?
• Inﬂationary pressures
• Expected drop in fundraising
• Increase in prices
• Are wages expected to increase or decrease?
• What is happening in the
world/nation/state?
• Writing Budget Assumptions down, then
taking a look at what we did and what it
brought in last year and make an across the
board assessment.
Fundraising For The Future
2023

2024 Major Donor Revenue Forecasting
● Granular projections are helpful if the team has
capacity to move through individual Major Donor
projections.
● CRM can provide a Data driven approach for setting
Major Donor Goals. Ex: We know we’re going to lose
x %, maintain x% and bring in x% of new funders.
● Levels of nuance are available based on team time
and resources.
● Average donor lifespan 6-7 years.

2024 Grant Revenue Forecasting
• Determine grant projections per funder. Be realistic!
• Starting with your success rate from the last year, or
the last 3 years will ground your projection.
• Ex: Project 30% of new funding requests will be
funded. Project 68% of existing funding will be
funded. Project 50% of lapsed funding will be
funded.
• What is your overall grant strategy? Increase
existing funding? Bring in new funding? Have clearly
deﬁned goals.
2023

2024 Enterprise Revenue Forecasting
Quick Poll
Which of the following qualifies as a Social Enterprise?
A- A nonprofit theater selling tickets for their shows
B- A nonprofit meal delivery service that offers catering
for businesses
C- An unrestricted gift to support general operating
expenses for a nonprofit
D- A paid course offered by a nonprofit to train
community workers in first aid
2023

Enterprise needs a home in your 2024 Business Plan
Unrestricted income that creates the path toward
sustainability and enhances your mission.
Renewable income!
● Is there a logical place for fee for service or product?
● Ticket sales for a theater?
● Sliding scale fee structure for high demand services?
Fundraising For The Future 2023 13

Planting Your Garden with Longevity in Mind
Perennials vs. Annuals
You have a garden plot to fill in. Each
year you hope to grow beautiful
flowers. You plant salvia, and yarrow
and bulbs.
Fundraising for your organization is
filling in your budget (your garden
plot).
14

Language is Culture: The “P” Word
• How comfortable is your organization with
making a Profit?
• Are you conditioned to pass a budget with
minimal profit? Or a deficit budget?
• What would your leadership do if you had a
moderate surplus? A large surplus?
15

Proﬁt Mindset
● How many budgets have you seen in your nonproﬁt tenure?
● How many budget surpluses have you seen?
● Is this by chance or by design?
● What are the internal obstacles to passing a budget with a surplus?
● What are the external obstacles to presenting a budget with a surplus?
16

Opportunity Abounds. Anything is possible
Remember our garden analogy?
• Perennial plants regrow every spring, while annual plants live for only one
growing season, then die off.
• If you know that 40% of your garden is going to return with fragrance, color
and volume, you can focus on cultivating your annuals and “ﬁlling in” the
blank spots.
• The same is true with your Fundraising Plan for 2024.
17
2023

• Operate your revenue generating “buckets” like a business allows for
decreased energy fundraising.
• Give yourself permission to:
• Charge for services that you already provide and aren’t charging for
• Charge MORE for services that you already provide
• Drop your discounts! If you are using this language with your donors,
investors or board, you have permission to stop now! Nonproﬁts don’t need
to give perks. This is a slippery stewardship slope!
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Perennial Budgeting:
Principle #1 Permission
Proﬁt is Permissible

Principle #2 Clarity
Turn permission into a humble, clear plan
• Set an earned income goal and build a separate business plan for it.
• The museum gift shop that barely breaks even.
• The T-shirt and Swag sales for that one event that always sells out.
• The one part of your website that should live behind the members only
subscription, but is still available for everybody because of its popularity.
19

Principle #3 Consistency
Small Changes Add Up
• An Advocacy Organization to prevent Domestic Violence sends an
advocate/educator into the ﬁeld.
• This advocate provides 200+ corporate trainings annually for FREE!
• The organization decides to charge a $500 fee per training.
• The Fundraising Plan now includes a $100,000 line item that will recur as
annual revenue.
20

• A youth theater presents 12 community performances a year for FREE.
• They conceded to change tickets from free to $5.00.
• The organization adds $12,000 to their annual revenue in the course of one
year.
21

• A membership based organization with over 250 members analyzes
their membership campaign.
• Upon viewing the campaign as a business, they decide to drop a
recurring the 20% “discount” for returning members.
• The organization and adds $14,000 to their annual membership
revenue.
22

Draw Inspiration from other Nonprofits
• Find a nonprofit who is comfortable with making a nonprofit and pay
attention to how they operate their business.
• Start a conversation!
• Take Notes.
23

What If We Make A Fundraising Proﬁt?
Will we confuse our donors or isolate ourselves from allies?
Will we confuse our program staff and send mixed messages
about our priorities?
Who will run the business? We’re all already busy!
Will we be taxed on our earnings or lose our nonproﬁt status?

5 Unproductive Fundraising Modes
To Leave Behind in 2024
#1 Overstafﬁng
#2 Understafﬁng
#3 Event Heavy Fundraising
#4 The “Because We Always Have” Fundraiser
#5 Pressure Cooker

Adjust Your Fundraising Plan for 2024
#1 Overstaffing & Inefficiency
The nonprofit that had 30
deliverables and 6 full time
fundraisers. 240 hours a week and
30 deliverables; average per
deliverable. Overstaffed and
complicated process. The everyone
working on everything approach.

#2 Understafﬁng
The nonproﬁt that got rid of
their executive director and
now relies on the e-team to do
all of the fundraising (in
addition to their jobs).

#3 Event Heavy Fundraising
Events are time vortexes.
Planning meetings,
subcontractor management,
not to mention day of and
week of overtime for staff.
Try time tracking for your
events and then divide the
hours worked by the NET
proﬁt from the event.
(Ignore the gross proﬁt).

#4 The “Because We Always Have”
Fundraiser
Events and fundraising campaigns can be
institutionalized without analysis. In
some cases, a person (read donor/board
member) takes ownership of the event
and it becomes “their thing”. What
results is an egg-shell situation where
the fundraiser is not proﬁtable but
nobody wants to disturb the donor, the
legacy or the perception that the
campaign or event is proﬁtable.

#5 Pressure Cooker
An organization contacted me with the
desire to build a fundraising plan to ensure
that they would not end the year in deﬁcit
like they had done the previous year. “We
need to raise 400K more than we did last
year”. Upon analysis, they were unwilling to
look at stafﬁng expenses and put the onus on
fundraisers to bring in revenue to support
overspending. The pressure to raise 400K
was unsustainable for the size of the team
and the shape of the organization.

Save The Date: Upcoming Classes and Workshops
31
A Consultant’s Best Friend: Why You Need A Business
Plan
Grant Station December 13, 2023
90 minute webinar $69
Nonproﬁt Management: Certiﬁcate Program
University of New Mexico, Anderson School of
Management
2/7/23-3/27/23
Federal Grant Institute
San Diego, California April 24026, 2024
Embassy Suites by Hilton San Diego Bay

Comments-Questions-Contact
Stephanie Sample
505-359-8244
Stephanie Sample
Stephanie@fundraisingforthefuture.com
505-359-8244
Comments-Questions-Contact
fundraisingforthefuture.com
Fundraising For The Future 2023 32

Bloomerang_Forecasting Your Fundraising Revenue 2024.pptx.pdf

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