# Fundraising the SMART Way:

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/fundraising-the-smart-way/
- Published: 2014-04-29T19:35:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**Predictable, Consistent Income Growth for Your Charity + Website**

Strategic planning and tactical fundraising can maximise income and minimise costs.

Fundraising is the lifeblood of the nonprofit, and, successful or otherwise, determines
the organisation’s ability to provide for the group it serves. Every organisation
attempts to lower overhead while increasing donations, but this often proves to 
be impossible within existing frameworks. Effective fundraising – increasing donations
while engaging more donors and lowering costs – requires a sound strategy that turns
major roadblocks into minor hurdles that are easily overcome. It’s not about trying
harder, it’s about working smarter.

_Fundraising the SMART Way_ provides the groundwork for a complete revamp of organisational
fundraising systems. Author Ellen Bristol applies twenty years of corporate sales
experience and eighteen years in fund development consultation to the problem of
inefficient fundraising. Bristol turns her extensive sales expertise toward the 
perspective of “selling” an organization to potential donors, increasing the donor
pool, and lowering the cost of fundraising.

Bristol presents two critical components:

 * _The Ideal-Funder Profile:_ a benchmark for each category of funder (donor, grant
   maker, corporate giver) that lists factual, quantitative characteristics of your
   ideal funder; qualitative or values-based characteristics; and the danger signs
   that suggest that some donors, assuming you were to win them over, may cost more
   than they are worth. A complex benchmark of this nature provides clear guidelines
   about which donors justify the most investment of time and effort, and which 
   do not. In the SMART Way™ model, we call such profiles Scorecards.
 * _The Donor Moves:_ milestones that locate the gift/grant opportunity in the pipeline
   based on the donor’s _giving_ process, rather than your team’s _getting_ process.
   Virtually all gifts and grants evolve through a short, predictable, unvarying
   series of milestones that provide effective performance indicators, both leading
   and trailing.

The book details the questions every nonprofit should be asking to maximise the 
effectiveness of fundraising efforts, and encourages systematic strategy development
by zeroing in on key factors such as:

 * Organizational goals, strengths, and weaknesses
 * Donor actions and motivations
 * Workload management and results QA
 * Opportunity evaluation and organisational action

The book outlines clear, concrete, actionable steps that can be immediately implemented
to escalate income growth. Effective fundraising is sustainable, consistent, and
on-target. It must exceed current need and expand to fill future need. _Fundraising
the SMART Way_ represents a true breakthrough in that it lays a foundation for true
systemic overhaul, and can be the catalyst for the growth of any nonprofit.

**Published in The AFP/Wiley Fund Development Series**.