Once again, the gap between “thought it would happen” and “here are the numbers” is looming large.
Some organizations are finding, with sighs of relief, that fall fundraising income isn’t coming in as badly as they’d feared.
Others are finding that huge sums they’d been assuming were theirs, are not.
In volatile times, those with strong stomachs start discounting. It’s not for the faint of heart.
I went back to the Cause Effective archives for an old chestnut we wrote in 2005 to help a client understand how to create fundraising projections, called “The Sleep-At-Night Short Primer on Financial/Fundraising Planning.”
Sleep at night? Doesn’t that sound good? But I digress…
Sleep at night? Doesn’t that sound good? But I digress…
The idea is to create a LIKELY scenario – and a probable scenario. These days, one can slide between the likely, the probable, and even the worst case, on a week-by-week basis. But isn’t it better to have these scenarios, and understand how they run together, than to simply react as your organization is acted upon?
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Indeed this is a challenge, especially when everybody doesn't quite see it the same way. Also, projections that were for General Operating Support, given the current climate, seem to be shifting to programmatic (while decreasing), and some (decreased) programmatic support is losing the amount of administrative overhead applicable. The best thing to do is, where possible, talk to the prospective funders with whom we have relationships to feel out what is realistic, and, as unfortunate as it might sound, make no assumptions about new funding, but celebrate any successes we do have in that area.
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