Community Fundraising Wizard

Welcome and thank you for taking part in Community Fundraising Wizard: the ten-minute tool designed to help you improve your groups's fundraising strategy.

The Community Fundraising Wizard has three parts:

Part 1. The survey to determine areas of strength and weakness in your own fundraising strategy.

Part 2. A basic scorecard suggesting areas where you could improve your fundraising efforts.

Part 3. More than 150 tips and ideas where community groups and schools can improve or expand their fundraising efforts or get better value from their current initiatives.

Note: This Wizard and associated guidance is put together only as a guide. We recommend your organisation use the ideas as discussion points in establishing a fundraising strategy that is tailored to your own group and target audience. Not all the fundraising methods will be applicable, relevant or suitable to all groups.

For best results, print out the 30-question Community Fundraising Wizard, grab a pen or pencil and work through the questions, rating your organisation's fundraising performance from "Excellent" through to "Poor".

Before you answer the following think about the size of your organisation, its resources and how much you raise from all methods of fundraising each year. Now, answer the following.

Overall fundraising strategy:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
1. Rate the amount of time and effort put into the development of your fundraising strategy?
2. Rate your organisation's commitment and enthusiasm for fundraising.
3. Rate the number of people actively involved in fundraising activities with your group.

Grants:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
4.Rate your knowledge of the relevant grants available to your group.
5. Rate your organisation's preparedness to apply for grants.
6. Rate your organisation's success rate in winning grants funding.
7. Overall, Rate your organisation's relationship with various funding bodies you apply to.

Donations:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
8. Rate gifts of donations to your organisation.
9. Rate your efforts in telling people how and where they can donate to your organisation (ie. cheque, online, direct debit, cash at office, collections, etc)
10. Rate your system of maintaining a donor database and communicating with donors.

Membership:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
11. Rate your own membership scheme.
12. Rate your organisation's ability to maintain members from year to year.
13. Rate your group's ability to attract new members.

Special Events:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
14. Rate your organisation's capacity for running special events.
15. Rate your organisation's ability to maximise the returns from special events.
16. Rate your organisation's preparation for running a special event.
17. Rate your organisation's ability to source free or discounted goods and services to maximise returns from special events.

In-kind Support (donations of equipment, legal services, etc.):

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
18. Rate your organisation's successes in seeking in-kind goods and services.
19. Rate your organisation's ability to identify needs and then approach suitable prospective suppliers.

Sponsorships:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
20. Rate your present ability to successfully identify and sell varying sponsorship opportunities.
21. Rate your organisation's ability to ensure sponsors are happy with the arrangement.

Merchandise:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
22. Rate your organisation's attempts at selling branded merchandise.
23. Rate your ability to select items that appeal to a wide audience.

Raffles, Competitions, Auctions and Special Sales Drives:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
24. Rate the work your group does to ensure that prizes or goods on offer are of interest to your target audience.
25. Rate the return on your initiatives given the amount of time and effort put in.
26. Rate your ability to source in-kind or donated prizes, goods or items.
27. Rate your organisation's ability to organise people to sell goods.

Media and PR:

Question	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
28. Rate your organisation's approach to media and marketing your fundraising efforts.
29. Rate your organisation's ability to get the message to a wider network outside of your normal support base.
30. Rate your organisation's commitment to planning how to get media coverage.

Calculating Your Results:

Now that you have completed the Community Fundraising Wizard, determine your total score like this:

Give yourself 3 points for each question answered with an "excellent".
Give yourself 2 points for each question answered with a "good".
Give yourself 1 point for each question answered with a "fair".
Give yourself 0 points for each question answered with a "poor"

Once you have your final total, CLICK HERE to find out what your Community Fundraising Wizard total means.