Let’s Talk About Money: How Evaluation Can Support Fundraising, Grant-Writing, and Donor Relationships
Image description: A picture of four stacks of coins increasing in size from left to right with sprouts, also increasing in size, appearing to grow from the stacks. To the right of the stacks is a large jar of coins with another, larger, sprout appearing to grow out of the top.
Since launching my new service, The Evaluation Walkthrough, I’ve been getting lots of questions that follow a pretty clear theme. I’m hearing messages like:
This sounds great, but will it meet the requirements from our funders?
Our funders require a specific type of information. Will we get the information we need?
Our main priority right now is fundraising.
We don’t have an evaluation budget right now, but this could be a great idea to plan for.
We don’t need to do evaluation right now.
I hear you. Fundraising, grant-writing, and development are priorities in the nonprofit world. If we don’t have the money, we can’t do our work. And having a good relationship with our funders is important to sustaining our organizations. So I have good news! Evaluation can be a powerful ally in supporting your fundraising and development work!
Whether you invest in large, comprehensive evaluation projects or only have the capacity for integrating simple activities into everyday work, evaluation can help you support your anecdotal stories with data, show your commitment to continuous learning, and give you new tools to share your message. What’s more, it puts the power in your hands so that you can be proactive with your evaluation instead of constantly responding to what’s being asked (or demanded).
Evaluation can feel like, and unfortunately can in fact be, a money-suck. I get why. If you’re doing evaluation in a way that’s not also supportive of your work, it ends up wasting time, money, and staff sanity. Spending lots of $$$$ on projects that don’t give you much more than a report that you don’t even want to read, spending time and limited budgets on tracking down information that is only used for reporting, and using assessments and metrics that are inappropriate for your population really are a waste of time and money. As an evaluation professional, there few things that pain me as much as seeing money, time, and resources wasted on evaluations that are inappropriate and of no real use to your organization.
BUT here’s the good news: not only can proper evaluation be affordable, but you can also use your evaluation activities to support grant-writing and communication with funders- all while doing something that supports your work and mission.
Here are some of the impactful ways evaluation can support your fundraising and development work:
It looks good. Let’s be real, everyone loves to see that your work is backed up by data. Whether or not your funders ask for it, the information you gather through evaluation- sharing your “data-” will support your message in both proposals and reports.
Support your fundraising and development team. Give them easy access to the most important information that will help them craft their messaging, reports, and proposals.
Maintain ownership of your own message. When you do evaluation in a way that supports your work, the data you use will focus on what you do best while also meeting funder requests.
Back up your funding requests and proposals. If you can show data behind why you need funding for programs, operations, staff, or materials you can build a stronger case for requesting money for the things you really need and, conversely, you can make sure that the funding you receive is allocated where it’s most needed.
Image description: A drawing of a flower pot with a plant whose “flower” is represented by a coin. A test tube hovers above the image dropping a golden drop above the plant.
Now, I know it’s still a challenge to figure out how to find the money in the first place. Allocating funding is a challenge, whether you’re trying to make sense of disjointed funding streams or have unrestricted funding, but evaluation is one of the biggest opportunities many organizations miss. My biggest piece of advice: planning ahead of time will save you a lot of headaches and wasted time and money down the road. Simple, annoyingly harder than it sounds, and true.
The good news: Many consultants, including myself, offer pro-bono (that’s right: free) or low-cost support writing evaluation projects into grant proposals to make sure you have the funding you need. One of the things that makes me happiest is when a nonprofit reaches out to me to plan ahead of time for their evaluation. At risk of being entirely self-serving, hiring a specialist really is one of the best ways to make sure you are maximizing your resource potential. But with a free consultation, a few minutes of time can save you a lot of stress down the road.
In the nonprofit world, everything we do inevitably goes back to fundraising and evaluation is no different. Whether you rely on support from foundations or individual donors, evaluation can be a powerful way to communicate your impact while doing something that truly supports your work.
Learn more:
Read our tips on including evaluation in your funding proposals
Learn more about how evaluation can be powerful in supporting your work
Download the Evaluation Culture Workshop Series or schedule a Q&A
Book a free consultation