Fund Development Strategy

Rethink Your Approach to Fund Development

Assess, clarify, and align. Incite’s fund development helps you connect with your ideal donors by providing the support to develop strategies, messaging, and activities that will ensure both market position and messaging is clear and well-developed, while improving brand awareness and visibility for both the organization and the fund development program.

Fund Development Strategy Process

Discovery

By engaging with senior team members, Incite will establish an accurate picture of your organization’s past efforts, current needs, future expectations, and overall fund development and communications goals. We will work to gain a better sense of the current perceptions of your organization market position, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), differentiation, ideal donor, and culture.

Research

We will assess your organization’s fund development brand, and position in the market by soliciting feedback from relevant stakeholders (e.g., current donors, prospective donors, Board members, and key influencers) who interact with your organization. Gathering market insight allows us to identify the gaps between where you are and where you want to be, and provides a better understanding of your stakeholders’ needs, pains, and expectations, as well as opportunities for strategic growth.

Fund Development Strategy

Incite will create a fund development strategy that builds off the knowledge generated in the research and our expertise in the field. Your strategy will help to align internal and external perceptions about your organization, close gaps in the donor experience, and make recommendations on how to build stronger relationships with prospective donors in order to reach your fundraising goals.

Execution Road Map

This phase outlines the specific activities that we recommend for bringing the fund development strategy to life. The Road Map will outline all recommended activities in detail, prioritize them as appropriate based on HR or budget constraints, map out a timeline for implementation, determine budget and related costs to implement, clarify the division of roles between Incite, your organization, and other third party partners required to support execution, and define key milestones to ensure the strategy is delivering the intended results.

Why Incite?

We have a strong track record working with Not-for-Profits.

Incite’s dedication to working with clients in the not-for-profit sector provides significant insight into your organization’s market reality. Incite has worked with dozens of leading non-profits, including Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation, Telus World of Science Edmonton, and the Edmonton Public Library, to develop effective fund development and communications strategies. We understand that most foundations require targeted stakeholder communication and that the way to build stronger brand awareness is not through mass marketing, but rather an integrated approach that leverages relational strategies to connect organizations with key audiences and centres of influence.

We are driven by strategy and ensure our clients have the right roadmap.

Incite is a strategy firm first and foremost. We leverage strategy to help organizations grow, build strong brands, and leverage communications to achieve specific objectives. Too often, marketing and communication is reduced to an exercise in sending emails or redesigning creative materials. For Incite, communications begin with strategy and understanding how an organization fits within each of its stakeholder groups. From there, a clear market position and differentiated value proposition is developed that forms the foundation for all future marketing and communications. We will equip your organization with a clear roadmap to move the organization forward over the coming 2-3 years.

Fund Development Support

Increase annual revenues through corporate donations
Increase profile amongst corporate audiences
Provide strategic insight and direction regarding brand surrounding corporate donations
Establish cohesive messaging and strategies to guide consistent corporate fund development efforts
Create a strategic roadmap to guide execution to achieve fund development goals
Identifying key ideal donor profiles for the public phase of the campaign
Identifying key community influencers and ambassadors to leverage
Confirming your market position, differentiated value, and key messages
Recommending key groups and companies to target for corporate support