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Structuring your fundraising is very important. It will affect how much you can raise - now and in the future. It will also affect how much you will have to spend to raise the money you need.
This section points to sources of advice and help which could help you to plan and manage your fundraising as effectively as possibly.
Good fundraising should be based on a strategy - your road map of how you expect to raise the money you need.
With a map you plan how to get from A to B - you may choose the scenic route or the quickest route - but you think through how you want to get to your destination, what resources you need, and the costs and consequences of using the different routes. Once you know how to get to your destination it is a lot easier to know if you are going wrong!
This site, a number of publications, and many consultants can help you to think about the strategy which is best suited to your organisation, your audiences, your budget, and your future plans.
The way you structure and control your fundraising will profoundly affect on your profitability, sustainability, credibility, and ability to achieve your goals.
For example, it will obviously cost more to employ 5 staff members than to use 1 staff member and 10 volunteers - but which option will be better for your circumstances? Who will control your fundraising database - an accounts department or a fundraiser? How will you control the different ways donations are received? How will supporters be thanked and kept informed of developments in your work? Will a fundraiser have responsibility for promoting the organisation, or will there be a separate PR role as well?
All simple questions - but the answers you choose to these and many more questions will have an important effect on your costs, your fundraising, and some of the internal politics within your organisation.
Like any business, organisations which fundraise need to operate within the law and to use common business practices. Fundraisers have additional responsibilities to their donors and the general public - to operate in an honest and transparent way which maintains public confidence in fundraising.
A range of advisors, software, codes of practice and other forms of advice are available to help the fundraiser and their organisation to adopt an appropriate structure and to fundraise legally and effectively.
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