The Fundraising Strategy Builder is a free, step-by-step tool that walks you through building a complete fundraising strategy for your organisation, covering everything from your bigger picture and the wider landscape you are operating in, to income stream plans, forecasts, risks and how you will measure success. Answer the prompts at your own pace, and the tool pulls everything together into a ready to share Word document at the end.
It is designed for fundraisers and charity leaders at any stage, whether you are a solo fundraiser in a small charity, a head of fundraising building a multi-year plan. Whether you are starting from scratch or reviewing an existing strategy, the tool adapts to where you are.
We want to thank the fundraisers who kindly gave their time to help shape this tool and make sure it properly supports the work you do. Thank you!
The Fundraising Strategy Builder is free for anyone to use, whether or not you are a CIOF member. We want to see more charities investing properly in their fundraising, and that starts with making it easier for every organisation, including the smallest, to put a solid strategy in place.
It helps to have a few things to hand: recent income figures broken down by source, your organisation's current business plan or strategic priorities, and a rough sense of your budget and team capacity. If you have had a fundraising strategy before, having it nearby to refer back to is useful too.
You do not need to be an expert before you begin. It is worth having a basic understanding of the different types of fundraising and where your organisation currently sits, and it is well worth involving a colleague or trustee along the way, since the best strategies are shaped by more than one person's thinking.
You can save your progress at any point using the Save Progress button, which downloads a small file to your computer. When you are ready to carry on, choose "Upload a file and pick up where you left off" from the start screen, upload the file that was downloaded when you clicked Save Progress and you will be back exactly where you left things.
Every section can also be skipped so if something is not relevant yet, or you need more time to think it through, just move on. Anything left blank will still appear in your final document, ready for you to come back to later.
We hope you'll find this tool useful - do send any feedback to membership@ciof.org.uk.
How did we create this?
We used original materials created by the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, coupled with AI support to create this tool. It has been led, created, reviewed and approved by members of CIOF staff. We are incredibly grateful to the fundraisers who helped shape this tool, who gave their time and insight freely.
