ARTICLE
5 Ways A Strategic Plan Boosts Fundraising
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Updated - 03/26/2025
Too often, nonprofit leaders think of strategic planning as a “nice to have” rather than a “must have.” In reality, though, strategic planning can become one of the most powerful tools in an organization’s fundraising toolbox.
When done well, a successful strategic planning process can clarify, energize, and streamline your fundraising strategy—and make fundraising itself easier and more efficient.
In this article, we’re going to look at how to use strategic planning to benefit your nonprofit’s fundraising, and delve into top tips for getting the most out of the planning process.
How strategic planning benefits fundraising and fundraisers
Better prioritize funding needs
After our team’s decades of fundraising experience, one of the very first things we advise nonprofits seeking to raise more money is to map and prioritize their funding needs. This is essential for ensuring your fundraising is focused and effective.
Many organizations start the year with an annual plan and budget. But without alignment across board, staff, and all departments, any bumps in the road can quickly create chaos for fundraisers. Anxious board members might push for new strategies that have little chance of sustainability (such as creating a brand new $10,000 scholarship program with a $500 seed donation from a friend). Program leads might lobby the executive director and fundraising team to put more time into raising money for their programs (at the expense of general operating support). Some board or staff members might even go rogue and pitch donors on programs that don’t exist yet and have not been approved by the executive director or board. And yes, we’ve seen each of these situations happen before!
Fundraisers can quickly end up spending more time putting out fires than raising precious dollars.
That’s where a strategic planning process comes into play. At Funding for Good, we emphasize the process part of nonprofit strategic planning. That’s because an effective strategic planning process should gather input and insights from across the organization. Then, through a facilitated planning retreat, your team works through challenges and co-creates a shared vision for the organization.
Once you have that shared vision, prioritizing funding needs becomes a lot easier. Everyone on the team knows what needs to be funded, why it needs to be funded, and how it will benefit the overall organization. Then, when funding challenges or opportunities arise, everyone can turn to that shared vision when making and communicating about choices.
Design stronger programs
Donors prefer to fund programs that can deliver results in smart and cost-effective ways. Plus, these are the same types of programs organizations want to be running!
Strategic planning gives organizations a chance to step back and assess their programs from top to bottom. With input from stakeholders, the planning team can consider which programs are working best and why—as well as ensure that all programming aligns with the organization’s overall mission and vision. This often shines a light on the most and least effective strategies across programs and highlights initiatives that need rethinking.
Many organizations are surprised during the strategic planning process to realize how poorly some programs are performing. For example, a program might be producing a high volume of impressive-sounding activities, but actual impact and results could be lagging far behind.
The strategic planning process helps identify challenges while also giving the whole team a chance to set collective goals, develop clear and measurable metrics to evaluate impact, and use these tools to design better programs.
Strengthen organizational operations and sustainability
Beyond individual programs, organizations with strong leadership, operations, and sustainability plans are better bets when it comes to donor investments. Even the act of undertaking a strategic planning process shows donors that your organization is serious about creating a sustainable impact.
In many cases, the planning process also reveals areas where organizations have under-invested in operations and systems. For example, many nonprofits are slow to invest in donor and contact management systems, instead wasting time trying to make old software or spreadsheets “work.” Many organizations also lag on staffing and training for data management, including donor data, which means they may be paying for expensive tools yet leaving donor information woefully out of date.
Investing in better operational tools and practices often saves time and money in the long run. It also helps fundraisers focus on fundraising instead of wrangling inadequate data and software.
Get board and staff leadership aligned and fired up to fundraise!
The most successful organizations approach fundraising as a team sport.
A fundraiser toiling alone in a back office—without support from the board or program leads—is going to struggle to inspire donors. In contrast, a fundraiser working with board and staff who are not only eager to fundraise but are also aligned on a shared vision and strategy, is positioned for success. These fundraisers can deploy staff and board members to cultivate donors, build relationships, and even network to find new prospects. This multiplies fundraising capacity, energy, and results, without squeezing the budget.
That’s why a focus on building a shared vision and internal alignment is so essential in the strategic planning process—and for fundraising. When approached with intention, this alignment can start even before the planning process begins, while your organization is learning about and preparing for strategic planning.
Save time on grant writing and donor pitches
One of the best ways to make fundraising more efficient is to create a grant template, also known as a boilerplate proposal. This template grant proposal covers 90% of the questions asked by funders and individual donors—thus making it much simpler to put together proposals, brochures, newsletters, website text, etc. because you already have the core language written.
Grant template proposals can be written for individual programs, projects, or general operating support. While grant templates may need some editing for specific donors, much of the text can be copied, pasted, and lightly edited.
Where a strategic plan comes into play is providing the core of every grant proposal and donor pitch you’ll be making. The strategic plan articulates your organizational vision and mission in the most compelling way possible. And it describes how your strategies and programming will help achieve that vision. The result is stronger pitches and a lot less time spent writing.
Tips for getting the most out of strategic planning
Once you’ve decided to undertake a strategic planning process for your organization, there are a few tips we recommend to get the most value out of the experience.
- Focus on the process before the written product. A strategic planning process is a unique opportunity to build buy-in and alignment across board and staff members, as well as other stakeholders like volunteers. We recommend organizations set alignment and buy-in as a core priority and use the final written product as a long-term organizing tool. Otherwise, leaders may end up with a written plan that few in the organization understand or support.
- Engage fundraising staff directly in the planning process. Fundraising staff deeply understand the connection between aspirations and income. They can spot potential challenges and bottlenecks early on, such as trying to increase revenue without investing in effective donor data management tools. That’s why we always advise organizations to include fundraising staff in their strategic planning committee or, at minimum, conduct stakeholder interviews and surveys with fundraisers.
- Include the perspectives of staff from across the organization. One common mistake is not having the right people “in the room” for strategic planning sessions. Staff at different leadership or management levels see the challenges in the organization differently, as do board members with different tenures and backgrounds. The same can be said for volunteers, members of the community being served, and community partners and stakeholders. That’s why we advise both taking the time to thoughtfully assemble a dynamic group of board and staff to serve on the strategic planning committee and identifying where stakeholder interviews and surveys can provide valuable insights.
- Be willing to question what isn’t working. Sometimes, a strategic planning process reveals that, despite lots of hard work, certain programs are simply not delivering sought-after results. When this comes up in the planning process, it’s tempting to look away or decide the solution is to “work harder.” We encourage our clients to fight this instinct and step back and think big instead. Pivoting or even scaling back an ineffective program might enable you to achieve more in the long run. For example, you could reassign staff to better suit their strengths, scale up programs that are outperforming expectations, streamline fundraising priorities, or even pilot a new and revitalized approach to tackle the same community need.
- Keep an eye on operationalizing your final plan. A strategic plan sitting on a shelf serves no one. That’s why it’s important to plan for how you will use yours once it’s complete. For example, we advise investing in operational plans by department (such as a fundraising plan that comes out of the strategic plan), creating annual goal-setting processes that align departmental, individual and organizational goals, protecting budgets for operational investments like data and donor management, and reviewing your strategic plan at least quarterly with board and staff leadership to assess progress and revise when needed.
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