Transcript

Thank you all for being here today. My name is Beckie Irvin. I'm the owner and lead consultant at Beckie Irvin Consulting super passionate about the outdoor space and grassroots nonprofits and really excited to be talking to you today about one of my favorite things which is finding fundraising success. But before I get ahead of myself I wanna give you a little bit about my background. So again, my name is Beckie, and I am a former outdoor educator. I have my masters of education and recreation and sport management from the University of Arkansas where I studied and published research on Women's perceptions of, and barriers to entry to the sport of mountain biking.

If you ever decide to go to grad school, I recommend coming up with a short easy to remember title for your thesis and published research after I finish grad school. I've been working in the outdoor education space for 5 years at the time, and I felt really passionately about taking everything that I knew about technical learning spaces and gendered learning spaces and creating programs and events for women, trans folks, and non binary people, and presenting them this information in the way that they were prepared to receive it which is when I founded my nonprofit All Bikes Welcome, and our signature event, which is Grit MTB Festival. We also call it Grit Fest. It's a 3 day mountain biking festival that takes place in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the fall.

I have 4 years of experience as the chair of a board of directors, and in the last 5 years, working in the nonprofit space, I've been awarded $875,000 from private foundation. So that's in grant funding specifically I'm really close to hitting my 1 million dollar mark, which will be a huge career milestone. But what I'm actually more proud of than that total number is the fact that that number is pieced together with $10,000 grants and $25,000 grants and $50,000 grants. We write a lot myself and my colleague Amanda, who's here today as well, we write a lot of grants in that, like 10 to 50,000 space. And I know first hand when you're in the grassroots space that like a $25,000 deposit in your checking account is totally life changing? And that is part of the reason why I am so passionate about grassroots nonprofits. With my nonprofit personally. All thanks. Welcome. I took it from chasing down the next donation all the way to now it's a fully funded operating nonprofit. We have a full time executive director. We have contractors who make up our staff, and then we're about to enter year 3 with full time staff and part-time contractors. And it's really getting to a place where it's feeling like a sustainable operation.

A little overview of what we're gonna be discussing today. So first and foremost, I wanna talk about like, what is a fundraising strategy like? What does it even look like? Determining and defining your fundraising priorities. This is where I start with most of my clients.

Permission to pay yourself. You're gonna hear this throughout the call today. I feel very passionately about the fact that nonprofit workers should be paid and paid well. You're doing skilled, highly skilled labor and your community really needs you to do it to the best of your abilities for many years to come.

I'm gonna talk about the different types of fundraising that you can bake into your fundraising strategy, and then also how to create a strategy that's sustainable.

So first things first is, I want to hear from you. If you could fundraise any amount of money this year. How much would you raise?

I want you think about it for 5 to 10 s, and then drop the number in the chat.

Is it 10,000? Is it 500,000? Is it a million like? Oh, I love it! I love seeing 6 figure numbers

That probably means someone's getting paid. That number that comes to your mind like right off the bat is probably pretty close to what you're gonna need.

What I'd like to know. Now, if you will type it in the chat like, what are you gonna do with this money?

Are you getting a salary. Is anyone getting a health insurance stipend? Are you gonna finally launch this incredible program that you've been dreaming up for years?

What are you gonna be doing with this money?

Someone said, yes.

I love it.

Capital campaigns.

Paying myself, my husband getting health coverage, finally, not self funding our initiative and chasing Covid sponsors. Yeah.

Okay, this is amazing. I think we're all right where we need to be right now. And I'm super excited to talk with you all. Amanda, who I mentioned Amanda Ravensberg, and it's with me here today, Amanda, if you want to wave amanda is going to be moderating the chat.

If you do have questions, feel free to drop them in there. I'm not gonna promise that we'll get to them because I have packed so much information into this hour. But feel free to go ahead and send them our way, and we'll get to them if we can.

So most people, when they find me. This is how they find me alright. This is where they're at and I have been there. As I mentioned myself, I spent 4 years, chasing down the next $20 donation, the next $50 donation, the next 2,000, micro grant trying to keep my organization running and severely underpaying myself.

And I call it the 5 Year Founder crack for me and for a lot of the people I work with. That was when I became so exhausted chasing down fundraising that I was seriously considering dissolving my nonprofit and my goal with you all today, and with all of the clients that I take on is to either help them get out of this or help them avoid it altogether. So if you're in like the planning phase of a nonprofit. I'm super excited that you're here. Cause you can start 5 years ahead of where some of us start sometimes even longer.

This is the mood board for how I want you to feel and operate in your nonprofit. I'm here to show you, and to affirm that it is possible to build a sustainable income streams for your nonprofit and not only can you serve your community and put money into the pockets of those who need it most, but you can also pay yourself. And you can pay your staff allowing you to do this work for many, many years to come and retain good talent like. That's something we talk about talent retention in the corporate and the for profit space. I think it's even more important than the nonprofit space. So we've got to be able to afford to pay these people living wages.

So let's get into it. What exactly is a fundraising strategy

To me a fundraising strategy is your map for the year.

It takes away this ambiguity and stress of like. Oh, my gosh! Am I gonna have enough money. And it really plots out.

I need to have this much money by this much time.

and if I don't. here's my contingency plan.

This can also be. If you're building your first fundraising strategy, it can also be your map for getting out of that cycle of constantly chasing the next donation

and really start to move you into space where you're you're always gonna be fundraising. But maybe the targets you're fundraising for are like 2 to 3 years out, or 5 to 10 years out as opposed to like. Oh, my gosh! How am I gonna make payroll next month?

So the first thing we have to do in order to create a fundraising strategy is determine funding priorities.

For a lot of people. If it's their first time building a fundraising strategy. We're gonna determine 2 things, how much money you need to get through the rest of the year.

And then how much money do you need for the first 3 to 6 months of the following year.

Cause when the calendar changes from December 30, first to January first, you don't want to start this cycle over. Okay, you want to continually, year after year, be able to push these fundraising targets out.

It's gonna allow you to be more present. And all of the programming that you're doing. It's gonna allow you to relax and trust that you have a positive cash flow. It's gonna allow you to stop sacrificing rest and family time. Okay.

This is really about a guide map for sustainability.

Still.

there we go.

I created a fake nonprofit for us to use as an example today. So Dad's for free daycare is a nonprofit founded by Chris, Jason and Isaac, who are definitely not celebrities, and they definitely don't have any of their own money or capital to put into this nonprofit.

That's for free daycare is a grassroots movement that started about 3 years ago. They've been doing incredible work and gaining a lot of organic momentum. They've got about 2,000 followers on Instagram and a handful of generous supporters who contribute $25 a month.

This is just enough for them to purchase some refreshments from the grocery store before their monthly advocacy meetings. They've been able to make some T-shirts, and they print handouts and flyers. Okay.

Despite their success. the founding members are really feeling the weight of their dedication.

They've sacrificed family time and rest in order to keep the movement going. And now, in 2024, they're looking to get out of this cycle. They wanna hire a full time executive director.

They want to bring on a social media intern with advocacy, experience, and they want to formalize their finances with services like a tax accountant, bookkeeping and a quick book subscription.

So what I'm gonna do next is I'm gonna walk you through mapping out a budget for them and then creating a fundraising strategy to support their goals.

This includes not just maintaining what they're currently doing, but also expanding what they're doing with these new hires and formalized processes. So to save us some time I've gone ahead and already built out a budget in Excel.

Did my screen just switch so you can see. Excel. It's not my presentation anymore.

Okay? And is it big enough? Do I need to zoom in zoom in? Okay?

Better.

You can make it a little bigger, Becky. I think that'd be helpful. Yeah.

alrighty.

So the first thing that I'm gonna do when I'm mapping out this fundraising strategy is, I've got to get down on paper how much money I'm expecting to come into the organization.

So I've got their bank balance as of December 30, first, 2,023.

They've got 10 monthly donors giving $25 a month, and through some of their own work they've also been able to do a small Giving Tuesday campaign. They made 300 bucks last year.

Alrighty with the current bank balance that takes us to about $3,300 this year, or sorry that doesn't include the current bank balance. But we've got about 33 additional

3,300 additional dollars coming in in 2024.

Well, now, let's see what it's gonna take to actually meet their goals for this year hiring an executive director. I'm going to give them a little bit of runway, because one we got a lot of fundraising to do, and 2 an executive director. Search is not a small job.

I would say, even on a 6 month. Timeline. That's a lot to get done.

But for the purposes of this example, let's say their goal is to hire an executive director. They're gonna pay them $60,000 a year, and they're gonna start on July first.

I'm also going to budget for their payroll taxes.

I've got a health insurance stipend. It's not much, but it also kind of compensates for the fact that the Ed salary isn't much.

I will add a note because I am such a huge advocate of paying people living wages. It's like, once you start on this road, we're also, if I work with you together, or if you're doing this on your own with your organization. You've got to figure out in those first couple of years how to incrementally increase that direct executive director salary to something that they can really take on the stress of running the organization and also feel financially comfortable.

A social media contractor. I think we can get this out of pretty low rate and still get some quality work. So I've set that here starting in Q 2, April first. But

goals are flexible. We can push this back. Okay.

Now I know that Dad's for free day care. They want to formalize their finances. So I've got

a quick book subscription, a bookkeeper fee, and a tax prep and filing.

I know already they've got some marketing assets in place like, let's say, they've got an annual website service subscription that renews monthly a $20 domain fee they like to print materials before their advocacy meetings.

They wanna do a new round of T-shirts this year, and in 2024 they really wanna be able to buy and gift branded pint glasses as donor appreciation gifts.

alright

programs. As mentioned, they do a monthly Dad's advocacy training, where they also provide refreshments. I'm gonna budget for that, even though it might seem like a small expense. Small expenses add up

they have an online parent support group, which takes 2 to 4 HA month to moderate, and they want to be able to compensate the person who's moderating it and

beginning in July. They want to launch a new program where they're giving away a thousand dollars a month of childcare scholarships.

some miscellaneous expenses. That

if I was their consultant. I would recommend. They also plan for immediately is one they're gonna need insurance. And it's probably gonna cost around $2,000. They're gonna need insurance to protect their staff, their board of directors, and their volunteers.

Bringing them. The first ever executive director can be a really abrupt and difficult transition to navigate, and having a third party there who's highly qualified and also having an objective

lens from which they can provide guidance and wisdom. It's going to be super helpful, not only to the founders, but also to the person who's taking on this role as your first, ever executive director. So I've budgeted in some nice consulting fees here.

And then a savings allocation that gradually increases another. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time talking about this, but a big part of getting out of this

stressful fundraising cycle is also building up a savings account. so

this takes me to my first fundraising target. It's like, how much money do I need to get through the end of 2024 and achieve these goals?

It's gonna take me about an additional 71 to $72,000. Now the caveat to that is.

I pretty much want to always be operating with 6 months of working capital in the bank at any given time.

That's not gonna always be perfect. Okay, you have permission to not to have less than that sometimes, especially in these beginning stages. But it's a nice goal to keep in mind. So if I can actually hit this target

and the first half of the year

when I bring on my new executive director. They're not gonna have to worry about fundraising for their own salary for the rest of 2024, and I can immediately start working with them to begin fundraising for the first half of 2,025. So how do I determine how much money I need to fundraise for 2025.

Look, I know, as a grassroots professional, you do not have a lot of time. And so I really stress that you don't over complicate this.

Just look at the second half of this year.

How much is it going to cost you to literally just repeat this 6 months again?

In this instance, it's about $64,380. So I'm gonna scroll down here, and I've already done the calculations.

Let's just say.

hypothetically speaking, to repeat everything I need $64,380. I'm gonna give myself a 10% buffer.

Okay, again, I don't want to overthink this part. I don't have a lot of time to spend on it.

This is, gonna give me my second fundraising target, which is an additional $70,818.

Now deep breaths.

Can everyone see the presentation again?

Okay.

this can feel

really far out of reach and impossible when you are in the throes of just like chasing that next donation.

But

I want you to consider that it might be possible for you to do this this year. Okay.

the work you're doing is so important you deserve a positive cash flow, and I can tell you from experience that this level of fundraising

is possible cause I've done it for myself, and I've helped my clients do it.

So now that I've determined these 2 numbers, I'm gonna come back and start creating what I would call my fundraising strategy.

and I think one of the most surprising things to me about a fundraising strategy is it's really not

that complicated of a document most of the time. I just open up word, and I start by typing out

fund raise a minimum of $71,000. By June 1, 2,024 in order to hire a full-time executive director.

Goal number 2. Finish the year with $65,000 in the bank in my checking account

and $6,000 in a savings account.

Can you imagine the completely different organization dads for free day care is going to be if they can hit these 2 targets

in one year. Okay.

now, we have to answer the really big question of like, how

and this is where we really get into building a fundraising strategy. So how do we hit these targets?

there are a million ways to raise money for your nonprofit. I'm going to run through these

thankfully, though you do not have to

remember everything that I say here, or try to write it all down, because Amanda is going to share a resource that I have on my website where I go into and explain each one of these types of fundraising and also share examples of each.

I also want to say that if you're building your first fundraising strategy, ever

doing multiple of these is not going to be feasible.

but doing one to 2 and putting your heart and soul into them, is going to teach you a ton, and really begin to transform the way you show up as a fundraiser on behalf of your nonprofit. So let's run through these. Okay.

a donation. I'm sure you're all familiar with this. You've either given one, or you've asked for one. A donation is a voluntary one. Time financial contribution to an organization or a cause made by an individual

recurring donations. These are going to be ongoing scheduled contributions made at regular intervals. So typically, if a nonprofit is soliciting monthly donations, they probably have a software setup on their website

where I can go in. I give them my information. I select a date and an amount, and then their software is automatically going to take that money out of my account every month.

Donor matching. This is a program where a donor's contribution is matched.

And it can be matched by a grant. It can be matched by a bunch of different different individual donations. It could be matched by a different grant. There's lots of different ways to utilize donor matching, and people love to do it because they feel like their contributions are making double the impact.

Crowdfunding. If you're familiar with like a Gofundme campaign, it's the same situation, and nonprofits can do them, too. Crowdfunding is a collective fundraising effort where a large number of people contribute small amounts of money online to support a specific project

grants. Personally, one of my favorites to do. They're all amazing, but grants are non repayable funds provided by they can come from government agencies, foundations, philanthropists. They can even come from other nonprofits. And they typically support either a specific project

or the general operations of a nonprofit

major gifts. These are substantial, typically large contributions from an individual donor.

Major gifts

it. It's like the dream scenario. When one person writes you a check for a hundred $1,000 or a million dollars.

These relationships take years to cultivate and depending on what space you're working in like a major donor might be 10,000 or 1,000.

But anyways, that is, major gifts.

corporate giving and sponsorships. These are typically financial contributions from businesses and for profit entities. But they can also be in the kind. Donations now

in kind. Donations can get kind of frustrating, because people are so much quicker to give those in kind donations than they are their money. But also don't write off your in kind donations, because

it might save you 2,000 3,000 $4,000 on an event. If

your local Walmart

gives you a bunch of fresh produce and granola bars and water bottles.

the difference between corporate giving and a sponsorship is that a sponsorship is typically tied to a very specific event. So, for instance, if you come to grip fest, you'll see

Brit Fest presented by box factory. in 2023 fox factory, was our quote, unquote title, sponsored but they're not necessarily

all of the money they give us goes to that one event. It doesn't go to the general operations of our nonprofit. If that makes sense.

Giving days, these are time limited, coordinated efforts. They can take place like I'm sure you're familiar with Givingtuesday or you might have a regional giving day. So when I was living in Benville, Arkansas, for 7 years

we have a day called Gives and it's actually coordinated by an entity. And they take care of the software and sending out letters to your donors at the end of the year. And they also give away prizes for the organization to participate. So I had an organization participate in our regional

giving day. and they got

the most donations out of all of the nonprofits, and just for getting the most donations, they got an extra $1,000. So in most of those donations ranged 5 to $25.

So even if maybe you've avoided participating in these regional giving days because you're like. Oh, I don't think I can make enough money. It might be worth it to participate anyways.

if they have some of these incentives created. You can also use that as data. Like, if if you get 100 people to donate $5 to your organization, you can take that as a data point to a grant Funder. Ask them for $50,000

and say, but like, Hey, I've got the backing of a hundred. My community members.

Okay, that's powerful

memberships.

Some nonprofits have memberships.

I see this like in the political space, a lot. People will have memberships.

Cause marketing cost marketing is when you go to the grocery store, and they're like, would you like to round up to donate to blah blah blah.

or in the South? We see it a lot with like fast food restaurants. People are like, go eat at this place on this day, and a percentage of the total of your meal will be donated to this nonprofit.

It can also, like I see boutiques do it. They're like, come shop with us on this day, and we'll make a donation to this nonprofit that we care about

fundraising events. These I would kind of put in like the classical realm of fundraising. They are Gallus, their options, their charity runs. The one precaution that I have about fundraising events is like

they cost a lot of money to put on.

and a lot of the nonprofits who are putting them on their budgets are

7, 8, 9 figure budgets. That's not so. You can't do it. But if you do plan a fundraising event. Kind of the

standard that I have for myself is like you should only spend

10 to 15 of what you plan to raise. So you don't end up spending $5,000, and then you get 7,000 and donations. But really you've only netted 2,000

something to keep in mind about fundraising events.

peer to peer fundraising. This is like when you see someone on social media, and they're like, I'm running the Boston Marathon, and for every mile that I run I'm pledging to donate $10 to this nonprofit of my choice.

I am looking for 10 more people who will pledge to do the same that is peer to peer fundraising. So I am reaching out to my personal network on behalf of this nonprofit

employee contributions.

If you have people in your network who work for like a large corporate entity. I know, like Walmart has programs where employees can elect

Walmart corporate, not Walmart. The stories just clarify. Walmart corporate has a program where their employees can elect to have Walmart make a contribution to a nonprofit

of their choice in their honor at the end of every year it might just be worth asking around like.

Hey, I know you work at this place. Do y'all have an employee contribution program. How does it work like. can I? How do I find out about more of these programs just asking around? And you can probably start to find some really interesting information on these programs.

And then finally.

program fees and sales. You can

totally charge people for your programs.

And obviously you can sell merchandise.

I don't like to put merchandise on this list, because I see a lot of clients spending a bunch of money on merchandise, and they make such a small margin of that money back in actual profits. And so I just don't think it's a great use of time in terms of quote unquote fundraising. It can be great for marketing. I'm not saying there's not a place for it. But

I do love

a program fee like not everything you do has to be free. And sometimes it's actually even better

to charge people for a program.

for

to lessen your attrition so like for grit fest. This is a 3 day mountain biking festival, and we cater the whole event so you can show up and you get access to these workshops. There's like a thought leader from the cycling space who comes and does a keynote, and you get 6 catered meals while you're there. Well, we absolutely charge a ticket price. It's not

what we would charge if we were trying to make money off of the off of the event, but

even with a ticket fee of $250 we still have a 30 attrition rate, which is pretty typical in the large scale events. Space. So

I encourage people to like

once you've got some nice free programs running, maybe consider creating another one that you charge for

It can be. It's a. It's a great way to generate revenue for your organization, and it's also a great way to like hold your community accountable to come into the programs that you're creating. So

these

our types of nonprofit fundraisers, we could really drill drill down into all of them. Amanda has shared a link to a blog that I wrote about all of these. And there's more examples in there. I've linked to a lot of Instagram posts, so you can see how people are marketing these different fundraisers. Some would highly recommend checking out that blog if you have some time and again

I mean, move on to my next point, which is that you've gotta determine which of these are gonna be best for your organization. You do not have the time, especially if you're in

this phase, where you don't have full time staff

to execute every single one of these fundraisers, you'll absolutely burn yourself out, and probably to the point of causing sound like physical harm or illness, which we really really want to avoid.

So when you're considering what's best for your organization, I mean, first and foremost foremost, you're gonna have to consider what's the human capacity.

You're gonna have to consider. What are your current programming and travel commitments?

excuse me, I

has said. Sometimes you have to pull back in order to program more in the future, so you might have to pull back for a short period of time. But if you get a solid fundraising strategy in place, and if you hit those targets.

the great thing about a fundraising strategy, too, is like once you start hitting the targets, and once you're figuring out

1, 2, maybe 3 types of fundraising that work really well for your organization.

then you've got like a base for the next year, and you get to just build and build and build. And all of this kind of leads us out of that stressful cycle that so many of us are familiar with, where you're just like on a treadmill

chasing the next donation.

And then finally.

I want you to to consider like how much money can be allocated to fundraising

I work

with.

I would say, 90 of my clients allocate $0 to fund raising.

They allocate a lot of time. So the opportunity cost isn't 0. But they're not planning galas where they spend $10,000 on a venue and catering and decorations. Okay,

so consider that and know that it's perfectly acceptable. If you're like, we don't have money to put towards fundraising, we've got to figure out options that are gonna net 100 profit, and that's totally fine.

alright, the next I want to touch on one more thing, and then we're going to bring this all back to Dad's for free fun, right for

free day care. Okay? Which is low hanging fruit. So another thing that I encourage everyone to do is like you've got to normalize and socialize within the community where you operate, that your organization needs financial support. Okay.

the way that you do that

is this low hanging fruit it is before and after every program you're getting up on the microphone. You're introducing yourself. You're stating your mission and you're asking for donations. Okay, your

posting on social media one to 2 times a month, directing people to a donation link on your website. You're participating in a regional giving day. And you're really outspoken about it on your social media channels like this is the low hanging fruit that starts to really begin to normalize for everyone around you like, oh.

this nonprofit entity really does need financial contributions from the public.

If you're not asking them, they're not going to assume. In fact, they're probably gonna assume the opposite. If you're not asking for it. They're probably thinking this nonprofits taken care of financially. I don't know where they get their money from. But yeah, they're great

or

she must be really rich, and that's why she can have a nonprofit. It's not right, but those are the kinds of things they consider. Even

just tiny things like setting out a donations jar.

Next to the refreshments at your event is like a visual cue to your community of like oh, they need public support, they need financial contributions

again.

this low hanging fruit, all of these like audio and visual cues, the social media post. You won't see immediate returns from them. You might not even see big returns in the first 6 months to a year, but give it 2 to 3 years.

and you'll start to see a shift. Okay, I'm telling you

my nonprofit. All thanks. Welcome. You saw. I showed you the photos of me, crying, that's where we were.

We're right now in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign for $30,000. It's a 4 month campaign. We got a 15,000 donor match, and that is the efforts of just like year after year normalizing with the community that we serve and the reach that we have that we need their financial support.

Alright.

let's bring this all back to Dad's for free day here and map out

how we're going to hit these 2 fundraising targets. Number one, we said.

Oops actually adjusted these numbers a little bit and forgot to change it. We had that first fundraising target of $71,000 by June first, 2024, so they can hire their full time executive director.

In my mind, this is gonna be a little bit more of like

a concentrated intentional effort. And so maybe what we do or what I propose as a consultant is a campaign, a fundraising campaign. We're gonna call it free care future.

I'm going to look for a matching donor

who can contribute up to $32,500.

I might not find that. But I'm putting it down here as like, this is what I need to do to reach this goal. Okay? And then I've got to raise the additional $32,500

through a 4 month crowdfunding campaign.

Now.

I'm probably

the fundraising strategies that I create as a consultant are indeed this simple. The one thing that I typically add that I don't have here is some kind of contingency plan.

In this case it would be as simple as it like

check in monthly, with all founding members to assess

progress towards fundraising goal number one

in April of 2024 be prepared to make significant changes to the fundraising strategy if we're not progressing towards our goal, how we'd like to.

I really like writing that fund that contingency plan into the fundraising strategy. So it puts everyone on the same page of like, Hey, we're going into this and we're gonna give it our all. But also.

if it doesn't work out because it very well might not. I have to shift fundraising strategies all the time? We've got a plan in place for how to approach this. Okay, I can also help avoid kind of like the freak out or the emotional reaction of like.

holy crap. What are we gonna do? It's not working.

We've got a contingency plan. Okay? And then goal number 2. Finish the year with.

We changed our targets here to $65,000 in the checking account and $6,000 in the savings account

here under goal number 2, I've kind of taken like the low hanging fruit approach. What can I do here to try to aggregate and addition this additional fundraising target?

Can I acquire 20 new monthly donors in the first half of the year? They've already got 10. Surely I can find 20 more people who will donate $25 a month.

I can apply for general operating support grants. I'm gonna start posting fundraising appeals 2 times a month on our social media accounts.

And I'm gonna plan to appeal to our

donor base through end of the year. Solicitation lots of people are looking to make donations at the end of the year because they want the tax. Write off, and I don't feel bad. I will gladly take someone's money in order for them to have a tax. Write off so

again. I think it's almost like

as I've made so many strategies. Over the last 5 years I used to make really complicated fundraising strategies, and they had

excel spreadsheets and broke out

25 different revenue streams and a month over month breakdown, and these are the targets we have to hit.

and I just absolutely strung myself out and stress myself super super thin. So what I've done is I've actually transitioned to this. It's better for me. It's better for my clients. Everyone feels like it's super clear. It's easy to read

and everyone feels like they can get on the same page and just like hit the ground running. So you really don't have to overthink this fundraising strategy.

Now.

we don't have time to do this on the call today. But

I said this, I've touched on this in the call. I truly believe that the most important thing you can take away from this call today is believing

that your fundraising goal is possible.

This is more important than having all of the fundraising knowledge in the world.

believing that as possible, because you can show up in perfectly, you can show up willing to learn, and you can

make adjustments and learn so much and find a ton of success if you just believe in yourself. So

I'm gonna tell tell you to do. I'm gonna encourage you to do the same thing. That my personal life coach has encouraged me to do, which is, write a letter to yourself as if this has already happened

as if you hit that 150,000 goal or that 600,000 goal.

And I want you to tell yourself in the letter what you're doing with the money. I want you to tell yourself how proud you are. I want you to tell yourself the impact that you're making in your community.

Don't draw it out. It doesn't have to be a long letter. It can be 5 sentences where you just say we did it. We raised the money. I got my first paycheck. Someone from the community told me. This is this amazing story about how our organization has positively impacted their life. I am so proud of me

that can be. Your letter

would highly recommend. If you're the type of person, too, who, like once you have an influx of information and inspiration. Your mind just starts buzzing. This is a great place to start like ground yourself in the belief and the possibility that you can transform your organization with a good fundraising strategy.

Write this letter and then get all those ideas out into your journal or into a document on your Google drive. Whatever you gotta do

now. I've

feel as though I've totally flooded you with information. And if that's how you feel

good, that's normal. I hope you feel like it was an abundance of information, and that it was welcome information, and then that I didn't totally like overwhelm per se but I do want to give you some additional resources, so that you're not leaving this. And then you're just like out there trying to figure it out.

First and foremost, is that I am going to be sending you this recording. So keep an eye on your inbox.

Second is my website, Becky irvin.com. I have a lot of resources that I personally have created, and then I also have a resource page where I have vetted so many of the resources that are already on the Internet and made lists of all my favorite ones. And they're categorized. It's like budgeting fundraising board of directors, programming evaluation.

I already read most of the Internet, so that you don't have to and check out that resources page on my website. You can follow me on Linkedin. I post so much on there, my friends make fun of me. They're like, you're one of those people, and I'm like, Well.

I will gladly be one of those people because I like sharing this information.

Also, next week I'm gonna be launching budgeting templates. Clearly, budgeting is a big portion of creating a fundraising strategy, and I know how overwhelming it is. So. I have been working over the past few months to create some templates that will go ahead and outline a lot of these line items that maybe you have or haven't thought about. You need

in order to scale, and they will be for sale on my website, starting next week.

And you can download them, customize them to your specific needs and add and take out things that you don't need.

And then, finally, in March, I'm going to be launching a Grassroots guide to securing Grant funding for week. Live course I'm calling it Grant Craft 101.

This is going to be a 4 week course taught by myself.

It's gonna be 1 h in the evenings on Tuesday. If you're in central time. If you're on the West coast, it'll be in your afternoon. And then, in addition to our 4 h, our 4 1 h workshops, you'll also get 1 h with me each week to do like a office hour. QA. Ask me anything. So we'll meet on Tuesday

at 5 Pm. Central time, and then you'll have about a day and a half to kind of synthesize the information and come to office hours on Thursday, if you wish. You totally don't have to come and we'll meet at 12 pm. Central time to just

talk and ask questions.

The curriculum for this course. We're gonna begin with the foundations of grant writing this is the types of grants how to clearly define your mission. You'd be surprised like sometimes when you're so deep in the work. You don't realize that you're not clearly communicating it to external sources. And then understanding grant guidelines, that's all. In week. One

week 2 is the components of a proposal. So you have a narrative, a budget, and an evaluation plan. Those are the 3 most common pieces of a Grant proposal. And we're going to talk about what to include and how to write. Each of those

week. 3, we're gonna be talking about grant crafting. We're gonna do a grammar refresher, persuasive writing techniques. And then my absolute favorite, which is, how do we blend storytelling and data

to create compelling narratives that make people want to give you those larger amounts of money.

And then finally, in week 4, we're gonna talk about how to write the best problem statement. So a problem statement is typically at the beginning of a grant proposal, they will point blank. Just say.

write a problem statement. You have 200 words.

It's a very short amount of time where you convince a fundraiser that there is a genuine problem that needs solving

because you can't. If you can't convince them there's a problem. You definitely can't convince them you're the best person to solve it. So I love writing really juicy problem statements, and finding, like the best data and the best statistics. And just making this problem statement hop so that right off the bat of Private Funder is like Whoa.

I didn't even realize this was a problem. And then from there we get to position you as the best person to solve this problem.

So that's gonna be Grant craft, 101 for workshop participants, cause I'm so incredibly grateful for you to you for joining this workshop. I'm gonna offer it to you for $300

to get this price. Or if you just want more information, please email me. And it's Becky Irvine at Gmailcom, and the price will increase on February twelfth. This price is only open to workshop participants. So let me know if you want in, and I will gladly send you a link to sign up.

And then finally.

Beckie Irvin Consulting and Research, Amanda and I take a lot of pride and like if it gives you a headache, we would love to help you with it. I love doing the things that really cause me a lot of stress. Early on. I tell people all the time like I am trying to be the consultant. I always needed

and so it brings me a lot of joy when we get to work with you, one on one, and write your grants, help you, make your budgets, help you create surveys and evaluation plans for your programs. And then create these fundraising strategies as well.

We are currently booking clients in April, and out. So if this is something you're interested in, you can go to the homepage of my website. And right at the top. There's a button where you can get a free 30 min consultation, or discovery. Call with myself. So with that. Thank you all so much for being here. Keep an eye on your inbox, and I will send you this recording, and

I hope that in 2,024 you have a positive cash flow

and can really be grounded in the work that you're doing, because I have no doubt that it's important and that your community needs you. So

thank you all. It's been a pleasure. Have a wonderful afternoon.