How to write a nonprofit fundraising plan

You have a development director, a grants manager, a finance lead who closes the books on time, and a board that has asked for “a fundraising plan” twice. Last year’s numbers sit in three systems that disagree. A consultant and a six-month process are not on the table. This is the plan you can write in two weeks from the numbers you already have.

What you are actually writing

List every revenue line you had last year with the actual dollars it brought in. Choose three lines to grow, and hold or drop the rest. Set one target per line, backed by arithmetic you can show. Name one owner per line, a person and not a committee. Run the retention math so the targets survive donor churn. Give the board a role it can keep. Put it all on two pages and have the board sign the second page. That is the plan.

The rest of this guide, part of our fundraising strategy coverage, is how to fill those two pages without lying to yourself. Two companion pieces go deeper on the parts that most often break: Donor retention strategy: the math, then the plan and Board member fundraising expectations that hold. Read this one first.

Step one: list every revenue line with last year’s actuals

Start with the general ledger, not the donor database. The two disagree at most organizations, and the ledger is what your auditor and your Form 990 use. The IRS already forces a split you can borrow. Form 990 Part VIII separates federated campaigns, membership dues, fundraising events, related organizations, government grants, and all other contributions on lines 1a through 1f, with program service revenue on line 2. Your list should be at least that granular, and one step finer on individuals.

Split “all other contributions” into gifts under $1,000 and gifts of $1,000 and above. The two lines behave differently, need different owners, and retain at different rates. Show events net, because a gala that grosses $190k and costs $95k to run is a $95k line. Count the donors or funders behind each line too; step three needs that number.

Here is the table for a hypothetical $6M human services organization with a development director, a development associate, a grants manager, and a database coordinator. The figures are invented for the worked example and carry no source.

Leave the last column blank until step two, once you have seen the whole table.

Step two: choose three lines to grow

Three is the number a development team of four can carry. More than three growth lines means nobody is accountable for any of them, and the plan collapses back into “raise more money.”

Pick with two questions. Which lines have room to grow, and which lines can your staff work this year. National data answers the first. Giving USA reports that in 2025 individuals gave 64% of the $617.2B in US charitable giving, foundations 19%, bequests 10%, and corporations 7%, according to the Giving USA 2026 release. If corporate sponsorship is your biggest growth bet, you are fishing in the smallest pond.

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s full-year 2025 report found dollars raised up 5.0% in 2025 while the number of donors fell 3.6%, with the growth driven by major and supersize donors. Growth is coming from fewer, larger gifts. Your plan should say whether you are joining that pattern or fighting it, on purpose.

For the hypothetical organization, the three growth lines are gifts of $1,000 and above, foundation grants, and gifts under $1,000. Government holds, because four contracts at fixed rates have no headroom this year. Events hold, because the gala nets half of gross and the same staff hours redirected to major gifts return more. Corporate holds, because fourteen sponsors is a relationships line, not a growth line.

If your grants pipeline is thin, read Grant strategy: which grants to skip before you put grants on the grow list.

“Hold” is a real decision with a real target: last year’s number, plus or minus nothing. “Drop” means you will stop spending staff time on the line, and you have told the board so. A line you neither grow, hold, nor drop is a line you are ignoring, and it will be the one that surprises you in March.

A plan that grows every line grows none of them.

Step three: set one target per line

One target, one number, one year. Not a range, and not a stretch goal with a floor underneath it. The board will remember the higher number and hold you to it anyway.

A target you cannot decompose is a wish. For each growth line, write the gap between last year and the target, then write where the gap comes from in units the owner controls: renewals, upgrades, new donors, proposals submitted. Here is the target table for the hypothetical organization. The retention rates it assumes are explained in step four. All figures are invented.

Read the last column as a to-do list, because it is one. Thirty-two new donors at $7k is two or three a month, each needing several conversations before the ask. Roughly 1,700 new donors is two appeals, a spring campaign, and a working monthly giving page. If any of that is not credible for your staff, lower the target now, in private, rather than in October in front of the board.

Hold lines get a target too: last year’s actual, in the same table, so their owners know that flat is the job.

Step four: do the retention math

Every target above assumes a retention rate. Say it out loud. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s full-year 2025 report put overall donor retention at 43.3%, which means fewer than half the people who gave last year gave again. Its full-year 2024 report split that into new donor retention of 19.4% and repeat donor retention of 69.2%. A first-time donor is a bet weighted heavily against you. A second-time donor is a two-to-one bet in your favor.

Apply this to the hypothetical under-$1,000 line. The organization has 2,900 donors giving $640k at an average of $221. At 43% retention, about 1,247 return and bring roughly $276k. Holding the line flat therefore needs about 1,650 new donors before any growth at all. The $680k target, with retention lifted to 48%, still needs 1,684 new donors. That is the honest shape of a small-gift program: a treadmill where the retention rate sets the speed.

Two consequences follow. First, the retention target belongs on page two of the plan as its own number, with its own owner, because it moves several lines at once. Second, the second gift is the cheapest money in the plan. Of those 1,684 new donors, the FEP’s 19.4% rate says about 330 will give again next year on their own. Every point above that is donors you do not have to buy twice.

The $1,000-and-above target assumes 144 of 180 renew, which is 80% and above the FEP’s repeat-donor figure. Say why you expect that, or use the national rate and watch the target drop.

Step five: name one owner per line

A person, not a committee, and not “development.” The owner reports the line at the monthly check-in and is asked first when it is off. The executive director can own one line, or two at most. If the executive director owns four, the executive director is the development department and the plan is a to-do list.

Owner is not the same as the person doing the work. The grants manager owns foundations; the executive director still joins the site visits. Board members are never owners. They make the commitments in the next step, but the number sits with staff.

Step six: give the board a role it can keep

Boards grade themselves poorly here. In BoardSource’s 2021 Leading with Intent survey, 48% of chief executives rated their board’s fundraising performance below average or failing, and 35.2% said members do not hold each other accountable for fundraising at all. The same survey found that 67.8% of executives at fundraising organizations already require a personal gift from every member without setting an amount. The problem is not the policy. It is that “help with fundraising” is not a commitment anyone can keep or miss.

The plan asks the board for three things, each with a count. First, a personal gift from every member by a date, at whatever amount is meaningful to them, so you can claim full board participation when a foundation asks. Second, introductions: each member commits to a number of prospects they will personally introduce to the executive director. Third, thank-you calls: a number of donors each member will call in the first quarter.

Those three counts are the board’s commitments on page two. Nothing else. Do not ask a board member to own a revenue line, to “help with the gala,” or to raise a dollar figure.

Step seven: put it on two pages and get it signed

Page one is the revenue-line table from step one, now with target and owner filled in and the grow, hold, or drop call made. Page two has four blocks: the three growth lines with one paragraph of tactic each, the retention target with its owner, the board’s three commitments with counts, and a sign-off block. If it does not fit on two pages, you have written someone’s work plan into it.

The board signs page two only. What it signs is the total target, the three growth lines and their targets, its own three commitments, and the review dates. It does not sign tactics, which staff can change without a meeting. The board chair and the executive director both sign and date it. That signed record is what you will need in month nine when someone proposes a second gala.

Review monthly at staff level and quarterly with the board, with one page of actuals against target. If a growth line is well under target after two quarters, the owner brings a revised number to the next review, not an explanation.

When not to do this

Do not write this plan in the first year after a merger, a founder’s departure, or the loss of your largest funder. Last year’s actuals describe an organization that no longer exists. Write a six-month cash plan instead, with the three lines that pay salaries.

Do not write it when one government contract is most of your revenue. That is a renewal calendar and a compliance problem, and two pages will make the contract look like one line among seven.

Do not write it before the board has adopted a budget. The fundraising plan is the revenue side of the budget. Without an expense side, the total target is arbitrary.

Do not write it in the silent phase of a capital campaign. The campaign has its own plan, its own counting rules, and its own owner, and a second document will confuse everyone, including the auditor. Capital campaign feasibility: are you ready covers what the campaign plan needs instead.

Do not write it if one person raises all the money and also runs the programs. You need the first table and the retention count, on one page, and nothing else. The rest of the format is overhead until there is a second person to own a line.