Introduction

What can we do to help nonprofits be more successful at fundraising? In order to help nonprofit CDOs and CEOs make better decisions about how much to spend on fundraising and how to spend it, we are exploring the idea of launching a website to collect information on fundraising costs and practices. It will:

• permit organizations to identify benchmarks for fundraising efficiency by size and type of organization and type of fundraising tactic
• identify best practices and strategies in fundraising

Here's the list of types of fundraising methods we expect to collect data on:

• Direct mail to members
• Direct mail to prospects
• Special events
• Telephone solicitation
• Major gift campaigns
• Website fundraising

1. Would you be interested in participating?
2. Are you considering expanding your fundraising tactics to new methods (such as those listed above) within the next year?
3. Do you use more than one of the fundraising tactics listed above?
4. If yes, do you think of your fundraising efforts as integrated or separate? (explain)
5. How will you make the decision about what types of fundraising to invest in?
6. If your fundraising budget was doubled tomorrow, how would you decide how to spend it?
7. How do you measure success?
8. How well-known is your organization in the community of potential local contributors?

For organizations that are in the process of building fundraising programs:

For organizations with mature fundraising programs:

What are questions of greatest interest to you? Please identify those for which you have a strong interest with a 1 and those for which you have the least interest with a 5.

• What is likely return on mailing to affluent households when my organization is NOT well known?
• If organization IS well-known?
• What are most effective means for increasing the visibility of my small organization?
• Do most organizations of my size have professional fundraisers? Professional public relations staff?
• Do most organizations of my size mount major gift campaigns?
• How many donors do organizations of similar size and in similar metropolitan areas have? How much do these similar organizations raise from small contributions? From major individual contributors?