“Where are we now? Where are we now?” The first steps in building your fundraising strategy

“Where are we now? Where are we now?” – David Bowie Having already co-written a 200-page book on Fundraising Strategy for DSC, being asked to write a 500-word blog as a short guide to building a fundraising strategy is quite a challenge. But here goes! I’d always recommend starting by breaking your strategic thinking on fundraising (and indeed your organisation as a whole) into three parts: where you are you now, where you want to get to, and how. This blog focuses on the first of these: understanding where you and your organisation’s fundraising are now. In fundraising terms, this is essentially about doing an audit of your organisation’s fundraising efforts. This is about understanding both the internal and external environments in which you do your fundraising, and the classic fundraising SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). What is the relationship between your fundraising strategy and your organisational strategy? Is there a ‘two way conversation’ between the two of them so that they can feed off each other? Don’t worry if the answer is currently “no” – but this should be where you want to get to, if not! If your organisation doesn’t have an organisational strategy (yet, because it really should), then I would instead think about the organisation’s vision, mission or objectives. Externally, I would suggest thinking about the environment in which your charity sits by doing some STEEPLE analysis. Thi