Fundraising Campaign Planner: Does Your Plan Add Up to the Target?

Development directors drafting next year's plan often find that the campaigns, added up, fall short of the target the board expects.

Three checks are worth running before the plan goes to the board. First, add up each campaign's allocation against the annual target, separately for restricted and unrestricted money. An over-allocated restricted line can hide an unrestricted gap. Second, give each campaign a written go or no-go reason covering audience, evidence, staff, lead time and capacity to steward the donors it brings in. Third, before launch, list blockers in words. A missing final approval is a blocker, and it shouldn't be averaged away in a score.

The director then has honest answers when the board asks how the target will be met.

Our Fundraising Campaign Planner for Excel and Google Sheets runs all three. In the fictional worked example, eight campaigns allocate 485,000 against a 500,000 target: a 15,000 gap, while restricted money is over-allocated by 15,000. Twelve selection checks return PROCEED, PROCEED WITH CONDITIONS, DEFER, DO NOT PROCEED or PENDING REVIEW, and a fourteen-check gate means any blocker reads NOT READY.

It plans at campaign level. It isn't a donor CRM, processes no donations and has no AI in it.