Thinking Through Campaign Strategy – Part I

“Who do we target?”
“What is our message?”
“How do we set our goals? What are our goals?”

These are just a few of the strategy questions that go into the planning of an online fundraising campaign. Strategy guides the campaign, presents a holistic view of issues, and cultivates a specific direction for the campaign. A framework is simply a way to think.

Our goal is for each of you to have the best fundraising campaign possible, so we developed a Strategy Framework to help you make this happen. Here’s a way to visualize this line of thought:

The intersection of campaign objectives, supporters, and capacity is the sweet spot for a campaign strategy. In other words, the goal is to balance objectives against what supporters will identify with against what internal capacity you have available.

In the next few weeks, we’ll dive into explaining each of these three areas in detail.

• Objectives – How do you set good campaign goals?
• Supporters – How do you understand supporters? What is the best way to communicate with them?
• Internal Capacity – What are the roles and responsibilities within your non-profit to manage an online campaign?

Our goal for this series on campaign strategy is to reduce, perhaps even eliminate, any sense of “overwhelmed-ness” and empower you to conduct an effective fundraising campaign with confidence. Check back for more!

(title photo by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/brylyn)