CIVICUS Toolkit: Developing a Financing Strategy for your Organization

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Tags:

• Financing Strategy
• fundraising
• non-profit management

We hope this toolkit helps you to make your organisation more financially sustainable and to ensure that it has some financial autonomy. By World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS)

In this toolkit you will find:

* A discussion about why there is a need for a financing strategy.

* Information about what is required for a successful financing strategy (Prerequisites for a successful financing strategy). This contains ideas about what you need to put in place in your organisation in order to be able to plan a successful financing strategy. You will need to think about the basics of planning, budgeting, financial systems, your public image and values clarification.

* A description of a number of strategic options for financing your organisation, including donor funding, earned income, member fees, fundraising from the general public, investments and careful spending.

* Some ideas for preparing a strategy document.

* Some ideas for making the strategy work.

Why have a toolkit on developing a financing strategy?
The toolkit will help you to develop a process for ensuring the financial sustainability of your organisation. We believe that thinking through a financing strategy for your organisation in a systematic way, and writing that strategy up as a basic reference document for the organisation, will help you towards gaining financial sustainability. If you use this toolkit in conjunction with other toolkits, you will increase the capacity of your organisation to plan for sustainability, and to generate the funds needed.

Who should use this toolkit?
This toolkit is aimed specifically at people who have not thought through a financial strategy before. Perhaps you have not been involved in running an organisation before. Or perhaps your organisation has managed without a strategy but now you realise that, to survive, you need a strategy. Where once it was enough to have a few loyal donors, now the funding field has become more complex. Donors increasingly expect organisations to look at alternative ways of generating finance. If you are in a situation like this, then this toolkit will be useful for you.