SUPPORTIVE APPROACH TO FUNDRAISING

Are you wondering how your organisation can become better at raising funds? Supportive Approach to Fundraising is a way of organising the work within a non-profit that reinforces its fundraising efforts and their chances of succeeding.

BENEFITS

Supportive Approach to Fundraising is an internal organisational strategy, whereby an entire organisation and everything it does backs and propels its fundraising efforts. This does not necessarily mean increasing people’s workloads but rather achieving a natural alignment between what everyone in an organisation does and its vision and goals for raising funds.

During the workshop, participants discover this simple but powerful method of organising work internally, together with a step-by-step formula for introducing, implementing and running it within an organisation.

The learnings are directly applicable in practice and help a non-profit make the best use of the skills, resources and creativity already available within to become more effective in raising funds.

The ultimate benefit for a non-profit is more success in fundraising, better financial situation and thus more resources for fulfilling its mission.

BACKGROUND

As challenges for inclusion, democracy, peace, justice, equality, health, well-being and more have been piling up in recent years, non-profit organisations are seeking to maintain and expand their funding sources. It is therefore beneficial to reflect on what the most optimal ways of organising fundraising efforts within an organisation are.

Raising funds in non-profit organisations is like oxygen given that financial backing is necessary to fulfilling their missions. Yet, few non-profits align their operations fully with their fundraising goals.

And whilst intuitively everyone knows that doing so would be a good idea, there are several concrete obstacles to making fundraising everyone’s business – lack of time, as people are often already overworked and overwhelmed, and lack of knowledge and skills to name a few.

Supportive Approach to Fundraising is an internal organisational strategy and a working method that satisfies these concerns. Whilst a certain amount of time and resources is undoubtedly needed to introduce, implement and run it within an organisation, the primary aim is to empower people to make modest tweaks to what they already do on a daily basis so that it contributes to and aids their organisation’s efforts to raise funds.

Thanks to this, the organisation’s efforts to improve its financial situation are intensified to the core.

CONTENT AND FORMATS

This workshop is offered in two versions.

1. AN INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOP

This workshop version allows participants to discover Supportive Approach to Fundraising and to consider if and how it could be implemented in their organisation. In a two-part presentation and Q&A session they learn about:

• the details of this approach, how it works and what its benefits are;
• the methods of introducing, implementing and running it within an organisation.

This version of the workshop can be given to a leadership and management team of a single organisation or people coming from different organisations.

2. A STARTER WORKSHOP

This workshop version is for organisations that want to launch internal conversations on Supportive Approach to Fundraising to initiate a shift in this direction. It is delivered to participants who all come from the same organisation.

The exact workshop content is always tailored to every organisation’s situation and developed in partnership with the client, but the basic framework we start from includes:

• an introductory presentation on the Supportive Approach to Fundraising: what it is, how it works, why is it worthwhile and what introducing this way of working means for everyone in the organisation;
• a presentation and facilitated discussion breaking down the organisation’s current fundraising goals, how they are currently pursued and what shifts come with the SAF method of working;
• a facilitated creative mapping exercise on organisational roles vis-à-vis the fundraising cycle.

* in remote facilitation, workshops are usually divided into two parts