Brazen Solutions · Org Resilience

In a small nonprofit, the fundraising plan is really a decision about where ten hours a week go.

A fundraising plan sized for a small shop — the budget-derived goal, two approaches, the thank-you calendar, two numbers. What to keep, what to drop, and where the ten hours go.

August 2026 · 3 min read

Ten hours a week is roughly five hundred hours a year, less vacation, less the stretch in late December when nothing happens except thank-yous. That is your whole fundraising budget. It's denominated in hours rather than dollars, and you can't borrow against it.

Ten hours, and what they rule out

Not the week before the appeal — a normal week. How many hours does fundraising actually get, after the board package, the staff issue, the funder site visit, the thing with the landlord?

Most solo shops land somewhere between six and twelve.

The realities table in Brazen's Doable Fundraising Plan template — those splits come from our field practice — puts major gifts at roughly 70 percent relationship-building and 30 percent asking, with about four qualified prospects needed for every gift you're counting on. Annual gifts run the other way: near 80 percent asking, 20 percent relationship-building. Events, once staff hours get counted honestly, cost 50 cents or more to raise a dollar at many organizations.

Most events go. So does cold acquisition, because buying strangers is a volume game and you don't have volume. And the habit of chasing every grant deadline that crosses the inbox goes too — criteria fit decides most grant outcomes before a single sentence of yours gets read.

What the small-shop version keeps

A goal that came out of the budget. The number your programs and your payroll actually require this year, with line items you can point at when somebody asks where it came from. The what goes in a fundraising plan piece works through the whole framework.

Two approaches. The standard advice is three new approaches beyond what you already run. At ten hours a week, three is usually one too many, and the one that quietly dies in March is whichever had no external deadline attached — which is nearly always the relationship work. Give each a target in dollars and a name beside it, even when the name is yours both times.

The thank-you calendar. The first-gift phone call before the week is out. Something handwritten when the second gift lands. And a date — an actual date, in the actual calendar — for checking which of last year's donors haven't shown up yet this year.

Two numbers, and only two. Retention first: of the donors who gave last year, how many gave again? AFP's Fundraising Effectiveness Project puts sector-wide retention near 43 percent, with only about one in five first-time donors giving a second gift the following year, while donors who have given before renew at close to 70 percent. Then unrestricted share — how much of what you raised is allowed to pay a salary. If the total grows while that share shrinks, the plan is winning the wrong money.

Permission to drop things, named out loud

The gala that nets nine thousand dollars on a hundred and eighty staff hours and four months of low-grade dread. Work out the dollars per hour, then set that beside what a well-fitted grant application or five stewardship calls would have produced in the same time.

"We're cancelling the gala" lands like retreat. "We're moving the gala's hundred and eighty hours into monthly giving and into the eleven donors who gave more than $2,500 last year, and I'll bring both numbers back in June" lands differently, because that's a reassignment with a date on it — and boards can vote for a reassignment.

If you want the page itself, the free Doable Fundraising Plan template was built for exactly this size of shop: one page for the annual plan, a follow-through page for the donor year.

Open next week's calendar and find the ten hours. Then decide what they're for.

Free template

Need a fundraising plan the board can read in one sitting?

The Doable Fundraising Plan Template: one page you fill in over an afternoon. The goal and where it came from, the kind of money you need, three approaches, every ask on a date, and a follow-through page. Free.

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