Analysing Your Fundraising Capacity

Part of the planning process for fundraising is to analyse your fundraising capacity, or the ability of your organisation to reach its fundraising target.

An analysis of fundraising capacity will include analysis of the people you have available, fundraising resources and organisational factors.

People are a key factor in successful fundraising. From volunteers participating in street collections to trustee members and staff - fundraising is only really effective when people are dedicated to a fundraising role. Your organisation might ask itself:

• How many staff are involved in fundraising?
• How many volunteers can you involve in fundraising activities?
• How much do you trustees contribute to fundraising for the organisation?
• What time do your staff and volunteers devote to fundraising?
• Do you have a fundraising committee?
• In the area of fundraising what skills and knowledge do your staff and volunteers have?
• What connections do you staff and volunteers have to other people, resources and organisations?

It is very important to allocate a budget annually towards fundraising. It costs money to make money - even for charities. Whether your budget is for volunteer expenses, ballot tickets or a marketing campaign for example, a budget enables proper investment in income generation:

• How much have you available for a fundraising budget?
• What proportion of income is your fundraising budget?
• Do you have a marketing budget and is it linked to fundraising?

The organisation may have resources at its disposal that can be employed for fundraising activity:

• What fundraising software do you use?
• What merchandise stock do you have?
• What publications and subscriptions do you access?
• Do you have access to venues and or equipment useful for fundraising activities?
• Do you have fundraising materials such as collection boxes, badges, money counters etc?
• Do you have projects which can used in fundraising events eg. Amateur dramatics group, youth arts project.

There are many organisational factors which impact on your fundraising capacity:

• How integrated is the need to fundraise in the culture of your organisation?
• Is fundraising part of your strategic planning process?
• Do you have a fundraising strategy?
• How quickly can your organisation adapt to funding opportunities?
• What limitations does your organisation have on the sources it can access?
• What contacts do you have in other organisations to explore partnership and sharing of resources?
• What support organisations are you members of?