What is a Sustainable Nonprofit Fundraising Strategy?

If you’ve ever written a grant application, you’ve almost certainly come across the "sustainability question.” This question asks how your organization will sustain the program after the grant period ends.

Most organizations read that question and think, “Well, we’ll ask you to keep funding us!”

It’s an important question and one that I don’t think organizations think much about beyond grant applications. How will you keep your programs running? How is your organization going to be funded over the next 3 years? The next 5?

Last year’s abrupt withdrawal of federal grant funding shook the nonprofit sector to its core. Overnight, organizations that had previously relied on federal grant funding found themselves wondering how they were going to stay afloat.

Most nonprofits don’t actually have a fundraising strategy.

They think they do. They have a budget, a donation page on their website, a content calendar, an email list that they send periodic updates to, and a handful of grants that renew each year. They probably have a revenue goal that they’re trying to hit each year.

Each of these things is working fine, but what’s missing is what connects them to the organization’s financial picture long-term – a system that looks at the full financial picture, plans for what comes next, and doesn't collapse when one revenue stream disappears, but offers a contingency instead.

What happened when federal funding and international aid disappeared overnight isn’t any organization’s fault – please don’t take it that way. But it was a wakeup call to a sector that has historically gotten very comfortable when funding feels, well, comfortable.

Take this example. I was the Director of Development at a nonprofit that had received a large, six-figure grant from a company every year for several years. The company demanded a lot in return. Honestly, it felt like a full-time job managing that funder. Because of the nature of the relationship, the Executive Director thought the relationship was ironclad. We had to reapply for funding every year, and every year, the Executive Director considered that money as money in the bank before it ever came in. I was constantly pushing for a multi-year commitment, which they wouldn’t give.

I always wanted to consider that funding as a maybe. The Executive Director didn’t understand why.

Then, one year, the company came back and said that they were cutting the grant in half. Immediately, the organization’s entire financial picture changed.

That organization I worked at? They thought they had a fundraising plan. What they actually had was one consistent funder and a loose strategy around the rest. That isn’t a fundraising plan; it’s hoping nothing changes (or blindly assuming that it won’t).

So what does a sustainable nonprofit fundraising strategy look like?

Sustainable fundraising strategies start with an honest picture of where your revenue actually comes from — and where it doesn't.

That means looking at your organization’s full revenue mix: individual donors (understanding what constitutes a major gift and where everyone else falls), grants, corporate giving, and events.

Your organization may not have all of these revenue streams. You may only have one or two. You may have additional revenue sources. That’s fine – as long as you understand the makeup of how your organization is funded.

As you’re reviewing these, you need to understand the full picture. Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many donors gave last year versus the year before?

• How many were new donors to your organization?

• How many were repeat donors?

• What's your average grant size?

• How many grants can you realistically apply for in a year?

• Which grants are expected to renew next year and which won’t?

• Are you planning any events?

• Does your current event model still work for your organization and its capacity?

• Do you need to adjust your ticket prices to account for higher expenses?

Most organizations know their bottom line. Fewer know what's actually driving it, or what would happen if one piece of it disappeared.

Once you can understand the full picture, you can start to look forward. What would 10% growth require? What would 25%? Not as an aspiration, but as a concrete question: how many more donors, how many more grants, how many more event attendees would you actually need to reach that? When you see those numbers, you can decide whether your goal is realistic given your current capacity, or whether something needs to change first.

That last part is important. A fundraising strategy that outpaces your staffing capacity isn't sustainable. It's just a different kind of crisis.

Why do so many organizations struggle with fundraising?

Too often, nonprofit fundraising is reactionary. There's always a grant deadline, a new program or equipment need, and payroll to make. When organizations are constantly responding or reacting to something, there's never a good time to stop and build a real strategy. So most organizations never do.

The problem isn't effort. Most development staff and nonprofit leaders are working incredibly hard – too hard. The problem is that raising money without a strategy is essentially starting from scratch every year. There's no building off of last year. There’s no momentum, just a number to hit.

This shows up in a few specific ways. Organizations set revenue goals based on what they need to spend, not on what their donor base and revenue mix can realistically support. They hire development directors and hand them a goal without giving them the infrastructure to achieve it. They make budget decisions about new programs, additional staff, and expanded services without a clear picture of where the money is actually coming from and assume that development staff can raise it.

And when something shifts — a grant doesn't renew, a major donor steps back, federal funding disappears overnight — there's no contingency plan. Not because the strategy failed. Because there wasn't one to begin with.

The good news is that this is fixable. It doesn't require a complete organizational overhaul. It requires slowing down long enough to understand your actual financial picture, set realistic goals based on that picture, and build the infrastructure to support them.

That's what a sustainable fundraising strategy actually does.

How to Build a Sustainable Fundraising Strategy at Your Organization

It starts with a plan.

Pull the last three years of data and look at all of your sources — individual donors, grants, corporate giving, events, anything else coming in. See if any patterns emerge. Is individual giving growing? Declining? Jumping around? You can't plan from a number you don't fully understand.

Once you have a clear picture of your revenue, look at your true expenses. If your organization has a strategic plan, use it. Then identify the gap between what you know you can fundraise and what your expenses are, and honestly assess how feasible that gap is. An 8% gap you can fundraise for. A 40% gap means you need to think carefully about whether you actually need everything in your expense budget, and whether you have the staff capacity and donor infrastructure to close it.

From there, look at what's already working. This is where, with intentional stewardship, you can find relatively easy wins. Can you get $5,000 to $10,000 more from an existing grant funder? Can you upgrade 20% of your monthly donors by $5? Can you reactivate 30% of your lapsed donors? These aren’t significant asks, but together, they can generate more meaningful revenue than trying to “find new donors.”

Finally, and this is what always gets skipped, get really honest about how you’re spending your time. How much of your week is spent on administrative tasks or in meetings? How much time are you actually spending on fundraising? We tell ourselves we'll call a donor "this week" and then seven months go by. Now it's awkward. What happened instead? Literally everything else.

Whether you have a full development team or are a team of one, knowing where your time is actually going is what lets you make intentional decisions about where it should go.

Sustainable fundraising isn't about raising more. It's about building something that holds.

Most organizations want to grow. I have tremendous respect for the ones who recognize that growth for the sake of growth isn’t a strategy. Sustainable fundraising isn’t always about growing your organization’s budget year over year; it’s about ensuring that your organization will be around to continue this work for the long haul.

Most organizations won’t implement these ideas. Not because they can’t, but because slowing down feels impossible when you’re already behind.

The question isn’t whether you need a strategy; it’s how much longer you can survive without one.

So go ahead, block some time out on your calendar and pull your last three years of revenue data. Look at it honestly and start to make a plan.

That’s the beginning of a strategy.