A development plan outlines a foundation’s goals and strategies for developing resources. It explains how staff, board members, and other volunteers should focus their development efforts within a certain period (usually one or two years). A development plan also helps measure progress in the midst of a process that might take years or even decades to bring tangible results.

What is included in a development plan?

• Objectives, both short- and long-term
  • What does the board hope to achieve? Be sure to include more than monetary objectives.
  • Where will the foundation be in five or ten years?
  • How will the development plan support the strategic direction of the organization?
• An action plan for each objective
  • Who are the target audiences?
  • What tools will you use to reach them?
  • What are the specific responsibilities of board members, staff, and volunteers?
• A timeline for the action plan

How do we get started?

Look at development plans from other community foundations, or samples from outside the field—your local college or university, for example. While your plan might draw on the concepts from other plans, it should be suited to your own individual community, region, capacity and operations.

A plan will help you attract the most prosperous markets of your community, but first you have to find out who they are. Ask yourselves: Where is the most of the wealth concentrated? Is it held by a few individual estates, or spread among individuals, corporations and private foundations? This will help you focus your planning and set priorities.

Who should design the development plan?

It’s important for the board to be heavily involved in development planning, as well as in implementing the plan. In some community foundations, the board assigns a few members to a development committee. This committee is either solely responsible for writing the development plan or it partners with the staff in doing so. In other community foundations, the staff is in charge of writing the plan and receives feedback from the board.

How do community foundations attract gifts?

Community foundations attract gifts and build funds over time in many ways. Here are some commonly recommended methods:

• Create a well-conceived development plan.
• Build long-term trusted relationships with donors and their advisors.
• Provide quality services and market products to donors and their advisors.
• Build credibility in the community.
• Emphasize personal visits and small gatherings rather than direct mail or special events.
• Offer multiple and flexible options for donors and their advisors.
• Highlight gifts that make a difference over long periods of time.
• Offer donors an option of permanent recognition or anonymity.
• Look to long-term, rather than immediate, results.

Whom should we seek out as new donors?

1) Start your prospecting with the people closest to the foundation—those who know and care about it. These include current and former board and committee members as well as current donors and their family. They are your “inside” audience, and can be your best bet for finding donors.

2) Ask your board, staff, and even current donors who they know. For example, board members with corporate backgrounds might be able to identify sources of corporate wealth and motivate their business associates to give through the community foundation. Similarly, staff might have contacts from their former professions, or from their universities or religious institutions.

3) From there, look to prospects outside the foundation, including:

• Community leaders
• Elderly long-time residents
• People without heirs
• Entrepreneurs/business owners
• Board members of other nonprofits
• Corporations
• Private foundations
• Charitable organizations
• Government agencies
• Parties representing judicial settlements (e.g., tobacco industry, utility overpayments)
• People who were born and raised in your community and now live elsewhere

Don’t panic. This list is more than any foundation can cultivate at one given time. Pick one or two groups as your priority targets each year.

Tip: Some community foundations develop methods for rating individual donors on their ability to give. For example, if a potential donor owns a corporation, you can gauge the donor’s ability to give by learning the company’s worth and profitability. Research companies at Dun & Bradstreet’s Small Business Solutions or through an internet search.

How can we find these potential donors?

Community foundations cultivate relationships with potential donors in countless ways. Some ideas for getting started:

• Gatherings in board and committee members’ homes
• Annual luncheons
• Inviting guests to board meetings (professional advisors, for example)
• Newsletters
• Recognition events
• Roundtable discussions about community issues
• Tours or site visits
• Informational breakfasts
• Volunteer opportunities, including the foundation’s grant committees
• Get-acquainted sessions at scheduled meetings
• Telling the foundation’s story at monthly meetings of civic and social organizations
• Handwritten notes thanking people for their interest or volunteer work
• Outreach to former residents and retirees

What’s the best way to approach potential donors?

Resource development is about building relationships. This means building relationships directly with potential donors as well their peers, associates and advisors. As in any situation, a personal one-on-one approach creates the best impression and often brings the most success.

Making a donor contact often begins with a professional advisor. Your community foundation should maintain active relationships with the professional advisors in your region—accountants, attorneys, brokers, estate planners, insurance agents, and so on. Set up meetings and make presentations to advisors—one-on-one, at professional associations, or at advisor breakfasts that you host. Stress to advisors how they can use the community foundation as a resource to help inform and serve their clients. Educate them on the types of funds offered and the variety of gifts the foundation accepts. You might also publish brochures, pamphlets, or e-newsletters designed especially for professional advisors (see the Community Foundation Marketplace for ideas).

When cultivating relationships directly with donor prospects, you should tailor your approach to suit the prospects’ interests and demographics. For example, you would approach an individual differently than you would a corporation. For more information and talking points for different types of donors, read The Community Foundation Handbook (Council on Foundations, 2006).

Although your approach will vary from one prospect to another, remember one thing: People give to people, not to institutions.

What development approach yields the best results?

The success of any activity varies according to the community, resources, and staff at a foundation. Again, because every community foundation is different, coming up with a single strategy isn’t practical. We can, however, tell you the most common strategies:

• Encourage current donors to upgrade their giving
• Solicit deferred/planned gifts such as bequests, IRAs, annuities, remainder trusts and life insurance
• Partner with professional advisors
• Engage successor advisors/the next generation.

Small community foundations most often use annual campaigns and special events to raise funds. Larger foundations tend to focus on high-net worth individuals and families, as well as on prospecting the next generation and diverse groups.

What should we consider when planning a fundraising event?

For small community foundations, one special event might be the main fundraising vehicle for the entire year. Fundraisers may be a lot of work, but they can raise not only money but your visibility in the community.

Before deciding to hold an annual fundraising event, carefully consider the purpose and focus of the event, and the possible appearance of competition with other nonprofits for the same supporters. You will also want to weigh the time and energy required of staff and volunteers to plan and carry out the event against the expected net proceeds from the event. Ask yourselves: Is holding the event cost effective? Do we have the capacity to pull it off? Is there a better development strategy we could use?

How do we measure the success of our development plan?

It might take years to see the results of your development efforts, so it can be challenging to measure the success of your plan. Tracking your activity is important. You can measure your success in several ways:

• Number and value of gifts received
• Number and value of gifts committed to but not yet received
• Size of expectancies and number of legacy society members
• Number and content of calls/in-person visits to prospects and advisors
• Board involvement as donors
• Board involvement in donor visits
• Marketing materials produced and disseminated to an identified audience
• Presentations to groups
• Special events (fundraising, recognition, educational, celebratory, etc.)
• Objectives achieved by each event (participation, volunteer involvement, net receipts, staff resources, etc.)
• Diversity of donor base
• Referrals from donors and advisors
• Donor service on committees
• Donor service quality as measured by survey results
• Press coverage of donor stories and events

As you evaluate in the short-term, think beyond what gifts you received and look to what building blocks you are laying for the future. Ask yourselves: What key relationships did staff make? What response did we receive from a donor advisor presentation? How many potential donors did we recruit as volunteers on an advisory committee?

In addition to using these indicators, you can measure success from what others say. Offer donors and donor advisors the opportunity to give you feedback. You might consider calling them periodically or conducting a survey of how they feel your programs are working. Create a feedback form on your website, or dedicate a specific email address to which donors and others can send their comments.

Where can we learn more about development planning?

• Join the AdNet electronic discussion list
• Attend the Council on Foundations’ Fall Conference for Community Foundations
• Attend the Center for Community Foundation Excellence Resource Development Course
• Align yourselves with colleagues of a similar profile or region (email community@cof.org for help).

Sample Development Plan

The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, 2002, excerpted by permission

Development

Communications

Donor Relations

Grant Follow-up

Resources

Association of Fundraising Professionals. Professional association of individuals responsible for generating philanthropic support for a wide variety of nonprofit charitable organizations.

Community Foundation Handbook: What You Need to Know, Council on Foundations, 2006. Includes a chapter on resource development and donor relations..

Community Foundation Center for Financial Insights. Offers a centralized data resource for community foundations.

National Committee for Planned Giving. Features an online library and resource center for the gift planning community.

Standards & Effective Practices for Community Foundations. This searchable online database features sample practices and documents from community foundations.

The Fundraising School, The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Offers courses, training and resources for fundraising professionals.