While getting your committee of volunteers to plan for a whole year seems daunting it has many advantages and allows you to focus on fundraising and helping those you serve.
Here are the 4 main advantages and what you gain from each.
1.You can focus on help people, not the fire drills of planning or last minute fundraising
This is probably the biggest way to sell yearly planning. You are a part of the non-profit to help those you serve, not to be on a continuous merry-go-round of last minute planning and scrambling.
Knowing when you will fundraise and what your goals are, allows you to plan ahead. You can write emails and social media posts early. You can create banners, flyers, and packets ahead of time. All of the tasks that need to be done for normal fundraising can be scheduled out with plenty of time in between to ensure that you can still be helping your constituents.
Outside of fundraising, you can plan on the activities to help those you serve and let them know. You can ensure that you are able to help more people by planning ahead and letting them know early what type of help and when you will be giving it. They can then plan around the times that help may not be available.
2. You know when you need volunteers and can let them know
Obtaining volunteers is sometimes the hardest part of fundraisers or other events. If you know a year in advance, your volunteers can put it on their calendar and plan around those events they want to attend.
You can also reach out to other organizations such as your local fraternities and sororities and have them put it on their calendars as charity work.
3. You can get yearly sponsorships
This is something I am big on doing. You cannot go back to the same well over and over without drying it out. If you know the fundraising events you are doing for the year, you can then sell yearly sponsorships. Learn about them in this blog post.
4. You can start to think long term
So many non-profits I come across are not thinking long term. They think from year to year but not two or five years out. If you can start thinking in year long terms, you can then start thinking in longer terms. Can you start putting 20% of your profits away into an endowment fund to grow so that your organization will have money in the long term? Are you looking to build a facility? What would your organization look like if you had half a million dollars to spend?
Non-profits need to plan for the long term and plan beyond the current members. You need to be thinking about the future and this is the first step in that process.