Knowing your organisation and its fundraising environment is a good first step to set up a fundraising plan. For it to be smart though, requires a little bit more than that…We believe that getting people to design smart objectives, is what will lead to smarter fundraising.
Look around
When establishing a fundraising plan, a charity would probably start by looking at its past performance, its internal resources and its current needs. We propose a broader picture. Start by looking at the market, your competitors, and the current environment. This information will give you a real sense of where your organisation stands in terms of fundraising performance in the sector.
Acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation as well as the opportunities and threats that surround it is essential to start planning your fundraising campaigns smartly. This is your starting point, the basis upon which you will build your plan.
In practice, it is easy to monitor, say, the response rate of your e-mail campaigns. You have a clear idea of where you stand according to previous results. Hopefully you will be able to improve on past performance. But that does not mean that your performance is optimal!
Looking outside your organisation to compare your methods and results and observe trends is essential for your strategic planning.
For example, by benchmarking what your competitors do, you might find out that their e-mail frequency is different to yours. It is then probably worth putting your plans under scrutiny to question their accuracy.
In terms of trends, you might also find out that an agency came up with a new online creative tool or e-mail design that delivers higher response rates to the charities using it. You’d surely want to consider using it for your next campaign?
Acquiring and incorporating this external information to your own results will give you a better idea of what can be done and will help you set accurate objectives.
Look inside
Analysing your performance and understanding external challenges is, as we have just seen, a prerequisite for success. But looking towards the outside does not mean you should neglect the inside, that is, your organisation.
Every charity or NGO has a vision - what it aims to achieve in the future. You should be able to perceive it and have it in mind when it comes to designing your objectives. Just look at any of your branded documents and you should find it there. It is important to bear it in mind because the vision of an organisation underlies its goals, its long-term beliefs and philosophy. When you design your action plan, you should ensure that your objectives will map onto these overarching goals. In return, this will guarantee that, once met, your objectives will contribute to the achievement of your organisation’s vision.
Let’s take a concrete example. Imagine a charity whose goal is to empower poor women in Africa. To achieve this goal, the charity will probably have different programmes across the continent, and each of these will have a number of objectives that represent the steps toward the charity’s broader goal. In our example, one of the programme’s objectives could be: By the end of year one, provide 200 poor women in Ethiopia with a 2-day training programme to introduce crops that they can grow around their homes.
As you might suspect, this is a SMART objective. Before looking what a SMART objective is though, let’s understand why setting up objectives smartly is so important.
As a fundraiser, you will not be directly involved in carrying out the specific programme objective described above. So why should you feel concern? Well, in order for it to be met, the programme team will need a specific amount of financing.
If the objective is set wisely they will easily calculate how much funding they actually need. And this is where you come in.
Summing up the different financial needs of the charity’s programmes will provide the fundraising manager with the financial budget they must target in order to fundraise. Having a clear idea of these needs will enable them to set up the fundraising objectives and action plan. Of course this is not a one way process as programme managers will also rely on the forecast of funds to be raised to design their own objectives.
Setting meaningful objectives is therefore the basis for an extensive and mutual understanding between the different departments of an organisation. Providing a standardised framework is also a mean of ensuring that everyone is working in the same direction, which is the achievement of the organisation’s goals.
Whilst every organisation has its own goals, internal policies for designing programs, allocating funds, communicating between departments… this example shows us that independently from each organisation characteristics, its success in achieving its goals depends heavily on the realisation of wisely set and interconnected objectives.
This is why the establishment of objectives is the most critical step in an organisation’s management process. Indecisive or inadequate objectives will lead to errors in judgment which will reflect on the entire organisation.
SMART thinking
Objectives are a critical part of your plan and they are the only mechanism by which success can be measured as they provide a framework to analyse what has been reached down the stream. Success is at your fingertips. It’s a matter of designing SMART objectives. But what makes objectives SMART? Ideally speaking, each of your objectives should be:
- Specific – target a specific area for improvement
- Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress
- Assignable – specify who will do it
- Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources
- Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.
(Doran, 1980)
From a fundraising standpoint, objectives could include: the amount of funds that will be raised, the categories of donors that will supply these funds, the acceptable costs of raising these funds, the average gift levels, response rates, return on investment.
However, although included, these desired outcomes will never be reached if not thought and expressed carefully.
In real words, a SMART fundraising objective could be: Recruit 1,000 new direct debit donors through street marketing between the period commencing 1st January 2012 and ending 31st December 2012.
As SMART as it gets
Once you have written such an objective, it is good to test them as a team, and if possible with stakeholders on the project but external to your core fundraising team.
To test whether your objective is specific or not you can ask the following questions:
- What exactly are we going to do?
In our example, we will recruit 1,000 new direct debit donors.
- Is the intended outcome clear?
An increase in the number of donors.
To test whether your objective is measurable or not you can ask the following questions:
- How will we know the intended change has occurred?
By summing up the number of new donors that signed up through street marketing between the 1st of January and the 31st of December 2012.
- Can these measurements be obtained?
These numbers are easily accessible for the fundraising team.
To test whether your objective is assignable you can ask the following question:
- Is it clear who is involved?
The fundraising team and specifically the individual donor manager.
To test whether your objective is realistic you can ask the following questions:
- Is this even possible? Do the team have the necessary knowledge, authority and skill?
The organisation recruited 700 new donors last year through street marketing so we know that it is something that can be done.
- Can we do this with the resources we have?
The proportion of the fundraising budget allocated to this objective has to be somewhere between 20 and 40% higher than the previous year.
To test whether your objective is time-related, you can ask the following question:
- When will this objective be achieved?
By the 31st of December 2012.
Charities and NGOs often have various ways of raising funds: direct mail, telemarketing, press advertising, street marketing, legacy, sponsorship or corporate events… For each of them, the action plan should include meaningful objectives. If you can answer easily and confidently all the above questions for each of them, it means that you have succeeded in designing SMART fundraising objectives.
This will enable you to have a clear idea of what is yet to be achieved it helps you understand where you could be and what are the steps you need to take to reach this place. Having SMART objectives in mind is what will drive your whole fundraising plan.
Smarter people
There are many benefits in designing SMART objectives: it helps maintain team focus, it gets people across your organisation working on the same page, lets them know what to expect and allows accurate evaluation of project outcomes.
By connecting the people within their teams but also across the organisation and by enabling them to assess their achievements, SMART objectives seem to be a good tool to make people smarter… on paper at least.
Indeed, it is important to understand the human side of the objective-setting process. This task is not as easy as it might sound. This is because setting SMART objectives requires time and we all know that time is money! And for some people it is an unpleasant experience generating stress, precisely because they are expected to produce something smart! They are not interested in the future if they believe they are being evaluated on a short-term basis. Busy producing, they usually don’t want to take time to put something on paper that they feel will commit them to a situation in which they may or may not have control over the variables.
Emphasising the self-fulfilling and inter-communication values of SMART objectives will help you ensure that your team will respond positively and engage with them. In the end, whether it’s a matter of objectives or not, being smart requires human participation and inclusiveness that will be the cornerstone of your success.
If you need help in putting together your SMART objectives,
please contact Karine Caby.