BIG’s Blog: Why Strategic Planning Now?

Even if your fund raising group has never developed a strategic plan and your fund raising has been fairly successful for the last 40+ years, why go through this exercise now?

Great question; why indeed?

Questions to ponder:

• What is the age of your average donor?
o Is the average age getting older?

• Fewer donations, but larger average gift?
o Actually this is a negative sign. While we want to see our average gift be larger than last year, we want to see more donations year-over-year. Fewer donations and larger gifts is usually a sign that your older base of donors are starting to give their money away as they approach end of life or loss of control over their checkbook.

• More competition?
o In 1987, there were 460,000 nonprofit corporations as designated by the IRS codes. In 2010, the number was over 1.5 million.

• Are you attracting younger donors?
o Younger donors are not as direct mail oriented as older generations. What is your plan to engage them?

• Cumulative effect?
o All the above and more!

Fund raising is fast approaching an inflection point where the tried-and-true fundamentals are changing rapidly. Maybe now is a good time for a new strategic plan?

-Mike

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