Short-term fundraising results v long-term sustainability: can it be done?
Howard Lake | 15 June 2015 | Blogs
The Mail on Sunday headlines moved on to different topics this week. But I don’t think the onslaught on fundraising will go away anytime soon. Fundraisers need to act if we don’t want to see our business compared to PPI selling.
In conversation with several fundraising directors this week, my view that it’s not what any of us want, was again confirmed. All of us came into fundraising to make a difference, to right wrongs, to change the world. Most of us don’t have the right skills to be on the frontline in the way our colleagues are – be that in humanitarian crises, carrying out medical research or caring for the sick and vulnerable. We have different skills. Our contribution is raising the money that enables our colleagues’ work. And for that reason, it’s no less vital, no less a direct contribution to our beneficiaries.
In my last blog I wrote about the need for a long term view of fundraising, underpinned by a strong donor focused approach – if you missed it you can read it at Mail on Sunday headlines – are fundraisers getting it wrong?
This week, I’ve been reflecting on the idea that strategy is actually easy. Or as Jack Welch wrote in ‘Winning’ ‘In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell’. That’s definitely true in fundraising.
Implementation – as every fundraising director knows – is the hard bit, especially when the pressure is on to deliver the short-term results that mean services can be maintained or the next potential breakthrough research project invested in.
Balancing short term results without compromising long term income
But there is a delicate balancing act that we can no longer afford to get wrong – we have to push hard for short-term results without damaging the long-term potential. That takes talent, commitment and resilience. That’s true of the fundraising director, but also of the Board and senior management team. For me, the key is that it’s not only the fundraising director’s job to get this right. In the best fundraising organisations, the responsibility for fundraising is everyone’s responsibility. The tension between short and long term income is explicitly debated and choices are made.
So how do you make sure your fundraising is delivering vital short-term results without comprising the long-term sustainable income that your organisation needs?
The answer in part lies in the tools you use to develop and implement strategy. It’s one of the reasons here at =mc we’re keen on the BSC/strategy map methodology – it begins with the premise that while organisations are good at developing strategy, they are less good at implementing it. The BSC goes beyond producing the strategy, to create the metrics to track and deliver success, and an implementation plan to describe how the activities needed to deliver the plan will be sequenced and rolled out.
Here’s a detailed explanation of the BSC/Strategy Map methodology.
The methodology forces us to ask and answer questions like how will we know we are genuinely ‘building long-term relationships that build life time value’ and ‘delivering an outstanding customer experience’. And that forces us to generate data to underpin – or change – our hypothesis about what makes our fundraising work, and to connect the short and long-term.
In our experience, it’s challenging to create a balanced scorecard for fundraising. But we’ve now used it with a number of major organisations – internationally and nationally.
So agencies from the IFRC to MSF and UNICEF are using it to transform results. And it’s an important part of really understanding the business of fundraising. And if we can do that we will create strategy that can be measured and refined to improve long-term results.
Angela Cluff is a director of the management centre, a leading management consultancy working exclusively for ethical organisations internationally. She was deputy director of fundraising at NSPCC during the fill stop appeal and played a leading role in the campaign. She is currently advising on global strategies for MSF and WWF. She is also a trustee of Care International in the UK.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.