If we build it, they will come (and fundraise)!

How many times have you come back from a training course, or been inspired by some reading, and wanted to build your learning into your fundraising work but not been able to do so easily, if at all? 

How many times have you thought a chart might be useful to you, but then had to spend ages reproducing it in an accessible format so you can type into it and apply it to your work? 

How many times have you needed a worksheet or proforma that gives you a starting point to help you prepare for, or analyse, your fundraising, whether it’s getting ready for an important meeting or building your case for support? 

How many times have you needed to build or rebuild a spreadsheet to help you, for example, to set your budget, analyse Return On Investment or monitor your fundraising performance? 

When I was preparing and collating the Charity Fundraising Templates resource this year, my motivation was thinking about all of that fundraising time that could be saved by having ready–made tools to hand. I thought to myself: if we build it, people will come (and fundraise)! 

And so the main aim behind the publication is to gather a wide variety of practical fundraising templates into one place so that you do not have to spend that time searching for and building those tables, forms, charts and worksheets. Instead, you can devote yourself to doing what makes your own work unique: developing your fundraising and actually getting on with it. 

How can this resource help you? 

My belief is that good fundraising relies on strong planning, systems and process management. And of course you also need to understand how all the pieces fit together and how they can be analysed mathematically. So, I included a wide range of tools to help you think about your fundraising strategy, as well as a variety of tables, forms, charts and worksheets that can help you develop, organise and analyse your fundraising across a number of income streams. 

Rather than a single person taking responsibility for fundraising and completing and imposing these templates on colleagues or fellow volunteers without wider stakeholder consultation, I do hope that they will be used as a timesaving starting point for collaborative work for you and your colleagues. Many of the templates and tools could be used in team meetings, workshops or board meetings to discuss particular issues together, to plan your fundraising, or as a way to monitor and report on it. 

My suggestion is that when you use this resource you think strategically across your organisation and fundraising activity in the first instance, using the templates in the early sections of this resource and focusing on strategy. Then maybe move on to fundraising budget and management considerations, before drilling down into specific income streams in more detail, as shown in the chart below. 

Will you help find the Unicorns? 

When I put the first draft of what became the Charity Fundraising Templates resource together, many of the 15(!) peer reviewers said the same thing: it needed worked examples throughout so the user knows how to type into what had become 80 worksheets, charts, and spreadsheets so they could make them their own. So I,almost literally, went back to the drawing board and invented a whole new charity called Find the Unicorns. I hope you like them. I got quite excited about them once I’d drawn up their case for support, their theory of change and dreamed up a few exciting fundraising initiatives for them, including diversifying by targeting grandparents of children interested in unicorns, and of course the Little Unicorn Finder sponsorship pack. I now believe that the magic of unicorns is real and hope you do too.🦄 

I did a thing! 

So I’m very proud to have done this ‘thing’, and sincerely hope that it will prove really useful for charities across the UK and potentially globally. In summary, it’s a digital downloadable resource of worksheets, charts, and spreadsheets (you will get a Zipped folder containing Word Templates and an Excel Workbook) that you can type straight into to help your fundraising– I don’t think it’s been done before in this way. There are 80 templates across 228 pages, each with introductory notes and many with worked examples to show you how they can be used. 

It’s my Labour of Love for 2024. 

If you can think of any charts, templates or worksheets that should go into the next edition, do get in touch at publications@dsc.org.uk, but in the meantime, I think I’ll go for a lie down! 

Richard Sved, October 2024, www.3rdsectormissioncontrol.co.uk