Prepare Fundraising Plan for Colorado CPR Association

Fundraising Plan for Colorado CPR Association
Institution
Date
Introduction
Nonprofit organizations are highly dependent on charity to fund their activities. Efficient use of funds from donors can ensure healthy life to a person in a year, restore eye sights and alleviate poverty in poor parts of the world. The need to have a proper fundraising mechanism is, therefore, imperative for the success of organizations that depend on donor fund. To create a more dependable source of funding for its program, an organization needs to build a relationship with potential and current donor. Organization does that by finding a way to appeal to both existing and prospective donors (Stephanie, 2011). One of the best ways to appeal to and retain donors is through a well-crafted and executed fundraising plan. The following paragraphs highlights fundraising plan for Colorado CPR Association, a nonprofit organization in Denver Colorado that specializes in the coordination of training and certification in CPR and first aid certification according to American Heart Association.
Colorado CPR Association is a non-profit volunteer organization in Denver Colorado whose primary objective is to offer basic life support training to individuals and organizations through a quality controlled pool of instructors, training center faculty and regional faculty. Providing materials, equipment's and by statewide communication to coordinate and encourage cooperation by institutions who are interested or involved in CPR. The primary goal of the organization is to transition to the professional nonprofit organization. The organization plans to expand its services to meet the demand created by an increase in cardiovascular diseases across the world. The organization intends to achieve that through improved training and increase enrollment while at the same time increase the number of involvement with stakeholders. To make this plans, the organization need to amplify its resource mobilization through fundraising and recruiting of in-house donors.
Fundraising activities to be used by Colorado CPR Association
The board has decided to engage in educating members on the essence of fundraising and the requirement of fundraising. Fundraising committee will be crafted and assigned the responsibility of oversight to the fundraising activities. Massive volunteer recruitment is planned to help with the engagement of stakeholders. They will be invited to the committee meeting, fundraising workshops and also fundraising events. One of the strategies to be used is face to reach face-outs and internet fundraising. To expand its prospects, the organization plans to engage in community outreaches, use board member prospect recommendations and also participate in recent volunteer solicitations.
The board members will undertake presentations at corporate brown bags, churches, medical training institutions, local churches and other local hospitals. The aim of the outreach is to promote interest from the broader public in the organization with the primary goal of creating a pool of interest. As a start, the board members and volunteers will be required to have a mandatory list of five to ten prospects from their networks before embarking on external recruiting. The team will data mine, compile and profile donors to the similar organization and other non-profit organizations as potential prospects. Using a rating system like one by Weinstein (2009) all the prospects will be rated and the system reviewed by the board.
To succeed with cultivation strategy, the institution will rely heavily on the enthusiasm of former volunteers to engage newly acquired prospects. A buffet dinner and a guest speaker will be held as a first cultivation event (Weinstein, 2009). The choice of potential guest speaker will come from an expert in cardiovascular diseases, this is important to make a connection between training and the real-life relevance of the said training. Volunteers and former Volunteers will be required to socialize and exchange ideas with potential donors to relay their personal experience of working with Colorado CPR Association. Using Weinstein's (2009) prime prospect tracking form, the organization plan on tracking cultivation process and the organization will also create a roaster to input donor information on both the potential donors and past donors. This will make tracking easy, and the pool can always be used as a pitch during foundation activities.
Use of social media strategy
The rapid change in technology has opened up a new avenue for interaction and communication. Every year a new application, a new gadget hits the market. For nonprofit organizations, this present and opportunity to develop new ways of interacting with its prospects, volunteers and donors. Nonprofit organizations need to jump into such opportunity to advance its fundraising efforts. To stay afloat, non-profits organizations need to re-evaluate their messages and the mediums they use to send those messages (Kanter, & Fine, 2010).). While fundraising activities take many forms, from collection boxes, raffles, events, sponsorship legacy and grants, the skill needed to achieve all this is communication. The ability to articulate to donors how their gift will meet the need of beneficiaries (Saxton, & Wang, 2013). The use of social media alone is not effective but must be blended with a multi-channel strategy that includes traditional techniques like email, face to face, and website presence (Waters, 2010). Social media platform offers more than just social networking but a platform that is all encompassing online tools for sharing and exchanging and sharing content.
Social media continues to change in its scope and activities thus making it a more versatile according to Resnick (2011), social media provide a forum for online discussion, blogs, social networks where people, interact and communicate with people of similar interests. Video sharing, photo sharing sites like your tubes. Colorado CPR association plans to use social media sites like youtube to create compelling documentaries that would be used to appeal to the prospects on the activities of the organization. Social media provide a platform for interaction with prospects and remain one of the most important communication strategies in the coming times (Saxton, & Wang, 2013).
Video provide a powerful tool to broadcast the impact an organization is making to an online video community. Colorado CPR Association will use a simple non-profit YouTube account which provides an opportunity to add clickable asks on top of videos and. This allows the video links to be shared through a wide variety of social media platforms. It also gives foll...