Blog

How a CRM can Help When Hiring a Fundraising Consultant

Today more than ever, it is vital for charities to get as much value as possible from their existing resources. Allocating the most appropriate fundraiser or consultant to the project is an important task that every charity faces.

A charity CRM can help you in your project planning stage and ensure every project gets the right fundraising resources. There are a number of important steps that need to be taken.

Clearly-Identified Needs

When seeking the right person for the job, thinking everything through is absolutely crucial for a rich and detailed brief to be created. This is the only way to provide would-be consultants with a clear picture of your goals for the campaign.

Items to include can be the ideal amount of money you’d like to raise, who you are targeting, and your cause that you’d like to most strongly communicate. You may also want to include any current or intended use of technology such as charity software, as this will help to make the fundraiser’s job much easier. With a CRM database at their fingertips, they are able to get right to work on getting in touch with your contacts.

A CRM database can also help a fundraiser to track the effectiveness of every campaign, which allows for the constant development and improvement of each communication. This process of continual improvement can help your charity reach its goals far more quickly than having to track the effectiveness of communications manually.

Research and Focus

Once the brief has been completed, it’s time to start researching potential fundraising consultants. This can involve communicating with other organisations to see if they have any suggestions. Following this, it’s then time to send out your brief. Having a laser focus is best when deciding who will receive it. This will also help your organisation to save money and time, as you will be directly targeting potential consultants as opposed to casting a wide and unfocused net.

Salary

Of course, salary will be a consideration for any organisation that is seeking a consultant. But it is by far not the first consideration. The best person for the job should always be the primary focus, with the salary offered coming in after that. Considering the salary offered first is a strategy, and it should always be considered whether or not a strategy will net the best possible person for the job.

You will obviously want to know how much money a consultant can raise but any good consultant will ask for more information about the project. By looking at certain details, they can determine whether or not they can help you raise money, and how much.

Patience

It may take time to find the right fundraising consultant, and so being patient is a definite requirement. But as they say, good things – and talented consultants - are worth waiting for.

Take the time to research and put together detailed criteria targets for the selection process, this will result in an educated selection. Lots of clarity at every step is what will allow you to get the process exactly how you want it so that you lose no time or money securing the staff and fundraising resources you are looking for.