Time to review?
With September looming and a back to school feel in the air, you may want to come up with new goals to attain. However, these goals can only be achieved when you have a solid plan and take serious steps. That is why you need to come up with a solid strategy to be able to reach your end goals.
In this article, we will talk about taking a step back to review and develop your fundarising strategic plan so that you can think bigger and achieve bigger.
Step 1: Review the Previous Years
What better way to see how well you have done than to review the previous years? Check out your analytics and data to see what milestones you have reached and goals you have achieved. This way, you will be able to check how successful you were and what things you did right, so you can replicate them for this year.
By reviewing the previous years, you will understand your own organisation better. You will be able to identify where you have gone wrong and what steps could have been taken. This will make sure that you do not repeat the same mistakes when it comes to the strategy you do.
Step 2: Study Your Organisation
Study how well your organisation is faring and what its strengths and weaknesses are. You can do this by creating your own SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis stands for “strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” It is a great way to analyse your own advantages and disadvantages, and how you can utilise them to make a great difference.
With the SWOT analysis, you may be surprised at how your organization is doing and what advantages you have. If done properly, you will be able to utilise your strengths even more and create better opportunities for your organisation. It will also help you realize what possible threats are present and can help you prepare for them in case they do occur.
Step 3: Set Your SMART Goals
SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and has a Timeframe) goals are to ensure that you are able to come up with realistic goals for your organization. The importance of SMART goals is to create goals that are achievable for your organization and to have a deadline for you to achieve them.
The importance of SMART goals is that it gives you an end goal, so you know if you are successful in your plans. Ideally, you should have some short-term goals, with one major end goal. Breaking them down will make them easier to achieve. It also helps you set your expectations realistically and helps prevent you from creating goals or trying to achieve something way out of reach.
Step 4: Know What Steps You Can Take
After setting your SMART goals, identify what steps you can take. This will allow you to know how you will actually achieve these goals and whether you will need to readjust them or not. You will also be able to know what are your own organisational limitations.
This is important to do because it allows you to know what you can and cannot do as an organization in achieving the goals. It also allows you to create an outline of a plan so that when the time comes, all you will need to do is to execute it.
Conclusion
Creating a fundraising strategic plan is no easy task. However, if you follow the steps we have mentioned above, you should have one in no time. Just make sure that you know what your organisation can and cannot do, and you should be well on your way to your fundraising strategic plan soon.
If you need your own fundraising strategic plan, Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants can help you come up with one. We bring our own experience in managing fundraisers to the table to guide you and oversee yours. Contact us today for more information.