It’s a common practice for nonprofits to bring in consultants periodically to ‘audit’ their fundraising function, particularly if they’re thinking about going out on a campaign. Too often, these audits are problematic. Consultants come in and start poking around. They talk to some of the fundraisers, dig in the donor data, analyze trends, and pontificate about best practices. Then, they write up a report with their evaluation and recommendations for improvement and deliver it to the organization’s leadership, promising much higher contributed revenue if the organization makes the changes they recommend.
Audits like this are icky. We see so many problems with them.
1️⃣ You’re asking the wrong experts. The people who know the most about your fundraising strategy, challenges, and opportunities are your fundraisers.
2️⃣ Fundraising strategy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Strategy must be tailored to each organization.
3️⃣ Audits stoke fear and division. As soon as you start talking about a development audit, your fundraising team knows they’re going to be judged by outside experts and worry about losing their jobs. They’re incentivized to be cautious about what they share with the auditors and with each other.
4️⃣ Audits disrespect the fundraisers doing the work. See items 1, 2, and 3.
At SVA, we’ve reimagined the development audit.
We believe that the people who are best able to assess your fundraising are the people doing it. They know what’s working and what’s not. They know where the opportunities are – especially the ones you’re missing. They understand the complexity of moving money to your mission.
All they need is the time and space and opportunity to share what they know and to ask the big questions.
Instead of auditing, we partner with fundraising teams for guided development assessments. We facilitate a series of conversations so that everyone on the team can focus on sharing their knowledge and ideas. Our role is to structure conversations, ask questions, and lead exercises to help teams go deeper. And then reflect back and synthesize what we hear. We also bring ideas from our experience and connections with other fundraising teams to enrich the assessment and generate new strategies.
The results?
🤔 A rich and thoughtful analysis of your fundraising strategy and practices.
🎯 Fundraising strategy aligned with your mission, values, and capacity.
💪🏾 A more cohesive, confident, and collaborative fundraising team that is invested in your mission and in each other.
💰 The capacity to raise more money.
Start Now
While we’d welcome a chance to work with your team on a guided assessment, you don’t need to wait for us to draw out the wisdom and expertise of your fundraising team. Gather them together – or carve out time in team meeting – to have these conversations.
Take turns sharing stories about times when you worked on a challenge together and are proud of what you accomplished. What made these successes possible?
Then, move on to talking about donors, values, and strategies. At each step, identify one small step you can take to leverage one of your assets and something you can let go of because it just isn’t working for you.
Reflection and assessment are practices that yield big returns. You’ll see the impact on your team and your revenue.
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