Investment of time and resources

You have to decide where to concentrate your efforts to achieve the fastest progress towards objectives. A large and famous institution was involved in over 100 different fundraising and trading activities. Research showed that one activity earned £235,000 but cost £225,000, another activity earned the same but cost only £31,000, many activities lost money and only six were considered really profitable. By ruthless pruning, a loss of £80,000 was turned into an income of £200,000 within two years. In general terms you should concentrate your resources into no more than six areas and ensure that each of these fulfils a series of criteria to ensure rapid progress towards objectives.

The criteria

• Will the method produce significant net income?
• Is it moral, ethical, relevant and appropriate?
• Is it low risk?
• Is it in an expanding rather than contracting market segment?
• Does it produce significant and quantifiable additional benefits such as database building, donor development or positive PR?
• Has it got a good ratio of cost to income?

Find out more about other fundraising issues and examples in the In more depth section.