How small charities can create a simple fundraising pipeline
A fundraising pipeline can be key to your charity's success. It's a strategic tool to help you plan, stay organised and make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts. Your pipeline can cover all your fundraising needs, so no need to create multiple documents for every aspect of your funded work.
Pipelines are a visual tool, helping you see where and when your opportunities lie, track your progress and report on your fundraising activities. However, a pipeline doesn't work in isolation. It coincides with your fundraising plan; a document you'll need to create your pipeline.
This blog provides some top tips for creating your own pipeline from calculating your target ask amount to using the tool to make an ask.
Top Tips
1.Know how many asks you need to make
Fundraising isn't as simple as asking for and receiving exactly how much funding you need. You'll have as many unsuccessful asks as you do successes, if not more. Luckily, there’s a formula to calculate your ask amount with this in mind.
If your project costs £2,000, you'll need to make asks for more than this amount. Here's what you need to know: project costs, fundraising costs, your application success rate.
A project will cost £2,000 (X) to complete and the charity will need to spend £100 (Y) on fundraising activities. They've calculated that they have a 40% success rate with funding applications (Z).
We need to apply this formula:
(X+Y)/Z
(2,000+100)/0.4=5,250
Based on this, we can predict that if they make £5,250 worth of funding applications and their usual success rate applies, the charity should meet their fundraising target of £2,100.
2.Find your themes
Your charity probably does more than you think. Take a preservation trust for example: they look after built heritage, but they also play a part in community wellbeing and education via school visits. Maybe their historic building houses some bats. There's four themes – heritage, community, education and environment.
Once you know what common funding themes you work falls under, look at your charity’s work and see what elements fall under each one. You can then package your work together, build a case for support and present each one to a funder which specialises in that theme.
3.Know your funders
Once you know the value of asks you need to make and how you’ll package you work requiring funding, you need to know who to ask. Some charities may have access to a funder directory like Funds Online, but these can sometimes be out of a small charity's price range.
Yet, if you know your themes and your fundraising packages, all you really need is the internet.
Begin by finding your big hitters – the Trusts and Statutory funds that, while challenging to get funding from, could be your biggest win.
Next, search for the smaller Trusts and Foundations. You can do this by searching key terms on Charity Commission, look at the Financial Statements of charities similar to your own, or ask your network who they'd recommend.
Once you have a list, research your potential funders to see whether your charity is eligible, if you have any warm contacts there, how much you can ask for, what the requirements are and when you'd need to apply.
4.Prioritise
You've got your target, themes, and list of funders. Now you need to prioritise your asks.
Consider two things – funder deadlines and priority works that need funding.
Let’s continue with the building preservation trust example. If a historic building has a half-collapsed roof then emergency repairs are the priority and approaching the funder who can help you with these works should come first.
Note which funders you already have a warm relationship with and who you need to start cultivating. A plan will start to form:
First – apply to a funder who will offer an emergency repair grant & get that roof sorted.
Second – several small charities may have deadlines coming up or open applications. Use your cases for support to submit applications for smaller amounts of funding.
Third – while you’re getting emergency funding and sending off cases for support, start cultivating a relationship with you big hitters which require a longer lead in time.
Everything outlined above can be pulled together in one place - your pipeline.
A pipeline doesn't have to be built using a fancy subscription or programme. Excel, Google Docs or any other spreadsheet app will work. Start off basic and build it up.
CBSCC can help you get started. Click below to get a free Excel template for a basic pipeline. A bespoke pipeline can be much more advanced than the basic template, taking into consideration your charity’s work and history.
Get in touch if you’d like to have a chat about starting or improving your pipeline!