Business Development Brainstorming: Integrated Income Strategy

Our nonprofit is undertaking a project to develop an integrated income strategy - from grants to donors to events. We will be doing a lot of background research, assessing ROI on different types of fundraising, and determining our ideal income mix and how we can build organizational capability to achieve it. We will run the project internally, but I would love to find a person skilled in nonprofit fundraising who could consult with us along the way.

As part of this project, a key outcome is figuring out our optimal organizational structure and how to add development capacity. We are looking for someone who is familiar with the nonprofit development org structure and can advise on how to set this up and how to think about budgeting and funding for the new structure.

FairShare has grown significantly in the last few years, partly fueled by significant grants awarded through extraordinary Covid-era funding. Our grants have allowed us to significantly expand our scope, develop a new regional network to support small-scale farmers, launch a program to find more sales outlets for BIPOC farmers, and expand our apprenticeship and training programs. As we look a couple of years out, when our grants are set to expire, we are thinking about what sustainable funding looks like in the future and how we can maintain organizational resiliency and maximize our potential impact. FairShare has been going strong for 30 years, and this work will set the foundation for a successful future.

We have aligned the staff and board on the importance of this project and tied it into our strategic planning, set to take place in Q1 of 2024. We have formed a team of four members who have deep experience with FairShare programs, including our Communications and Development manager. This team has scoped the project and defined goals, identified research topics and decision points, and is in the process of developing a detailed project work plan. The organization is aligned that this is one of our top priorities. The project will include the implementation of new workflows in fundraising, including coordination of efforts, potential redesign of organization roles, updated role of board and committees, and new processes and resources.