Brazen Solutions · Org Resilience

You've run the same fundraising calendar for six years. A fundraising audit asks what each piece actually returns.

What a fundraising audit examines — where the revenue really comes from, who came back, how much of it you're allowed to spend, and what each approach costs in staff hours. When it's worth doing, and the three things you can check yourself this month from a spreadsheet export.

August 2026 · 3 min read

Something in your program is performing better than anyone realizes and hasn't been fed in years. Something else is quietly expensive and survives because it's traditional. Money is leaking out the back through donors who gave once and never heard from you again. And most of the time there's one change in there that pays for the rest of the list.

What it examines

Where the revenue really comes from. Three years of totals, broken out by source, side by side on a single page. Government, foundations, individuals, events, corporate, earned. The first thing that surfaces is concentration.

Who came back. Of the donors who gave the year before last, how many gave again last year. That single percentage explains more flat years than anything else in the file.

How much of it you're allowed to spend. Split those same three years by restricted and unrestricted, and look at the share each year rather than the dollar totals. An organization can post its best year on record and come out of it poorer in the money that pays people. That split, and what it does to the goal, is most of what goes in a fundraising plan.

What each approach costs — in dollars and in hours. Cost per dollar raised is arithmetic once you chase the expenses out of the lines they hide in. Hours per dollar raised is the number that changes decisions, because hours are the resource you're actually out of.

What your systems can and can't answer. Half of an audit is asking the database plain questions and watching what happens. How many donors upgraded. Who gave three years running and then stopped. When a question takes three weeks and two people to answer, that's a finding on its own.

Whether you followed through. Days between a gift arriving and a human saying thank you. Whether last year's grant reports went in on time, or at all, and what happened to the funders who never got one. This is the least glamorous part of the work and the part that most often turns into money.

When it's worth doing

Three flat years. A leadership change. Before you hire a development role. And before a board sets a bigger number, because the machinery underneath a number is exactly what nobody checks before they raise it.

What you can check yourself this month

You don't need a consultant to start. Most of this is a spreadsheet export and one uninterrupted afternoon.

Start with retention. Export every donor who gave in the fiscal year before last, then every donor who gave last year. Match them on donor ID, or on name and postal code if the IDs are a mess. Count how many names appear in both, divide by the size of the first list, and there's your retention rate.

Then build the three-year revenue table. Every source, every year, dollars and percentage of total. Look at the biggest line and ask what happens if it halves.

Last, work out what percentage of each of those three years was unrestricted. Three data points and a direction. If that line is falling, you have found the thing to fix.

Put those three on one page and bring them to your next board meeting.

And when you want an outside read on where the money actually is — that's the fundraising plans and audits work.

Pull those three years onto one page this week, and look at the shape of it before you plan another thing.

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.

Or see what's inside →

Wondering whether your organization could carry a capital campaign? The free readiness assessment scores you across the eight areas that decide it.

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