EMNNMS Steps to Sustainability
So You Want to Reach Financial Sustainability?
Foresee Communications has developed a new tool to make fundraising planning easier and to show you the steps towards financial sustainability. To make some immediate gains on your fundraising plan, Foresee identifies some realistic opportunities to move you towards your fundraising goals.
We all want to reach the magic goal of financial sustainability for our non profit organisation. There are many definitions of what sustainability means but for our purposes sustainability is about achieving a regular level of income that guarantees the organisation can continue to operate on a very long term horizon. To be sustainable you will have an endowment fund that generates interest, bequests that grow your endowment fund and (possibly) property that will increase in value or return income from rentals.
Sustainable organisations raise money from all fundraising avenues, have significant databases of supporters and have a brand that can be valued. They usually have a long history and their activities and services are widely recognised.
Reaching sustainability is not about luck but about good planning. It won’t happen overnight but with good planning it is achievable for any kind of worthy organisation. First you acknowledge where you are, and then you set about planning the activities that will take you towards sustainability, step by step.
Many organisations dive into a fundraising plan with only a cursory thought as to whether or not they’re starting in the right place, or whether they truly understand the full planning process. Heather Newell of Foresee Communications, publisher of Sponsorship Profile and Fundraising in New Zealand, says many organisations have little understanding of the steps towards sustainability and are focused only on the short term. Without any understanding of what is possible longer term, they miss opportunities and fail to spend time and energy on the most important aspect of all, relationship building. Without some focus on the long term, they are not capitalising on the knowledge gained and relationships initiated so they often end up organising the same activities from scratch year after year without making any progress towards sustainability.
“The fundraising plan is fairly simple in itself. It’s the who, why, where, what, when and how. The process of preparing for the fundraising plan though,” said Heather, “can be made easier by understanding where you are starting from, and what your destination is.” To make it easy to start at the right place, a simple questionnaire had been devised by Foresee Communications to show you where you are as an organisation, and what you can realistically achieve as you aim for fundraising sustainability. The questionnaire, called the EMNNMS test, comes from the first letters of the five stages of non profit development as designed by Foresee Communications. The stages are EMerging, Newsworthy, Networking, Maturing and Sustainable.
At any time during your planning process, you can answer the EMNNMS questionnaire and get an immediate report on what should be included in your forward planning.
Once you have the EMNNMS report you will have a clear idea of the opportunities that you could pursue to move your organisation forward.
Using the recommendations contained in the EMNNMS report you will be able to formulate your own long-term organisational fundraising plan.
The Purpose of the EMNNMS scale
The EMNNMS scale, designed by Foresee Communications, will show where your organisation sits on a continuum. At the early stages an organisation is Emerging. It has few supporters and has probably been established to respond to a single issue. At the ultimate end of the scale an organisation has reached Sustainability and derives income from investments and bequests. It would be a rare situation for one organisation to go from emerging to sustainable overnight although there are examples of small organisations receiving substantial bequests. For the majority of organisations though, the move to sustainability will be a gradual evolution that can be well planned. Our questionnaire identifies how far you have moved along the continuum and what action strategies will take you to the next level.
The report will help you with your fundraising planning by identifying organisational issues that must be mastered before you can successfully move towards sustainability. For example to undertake a national appeal you must have a significant number of volunteers. To gain volunteers you must advertise your cause and build relationships. To advertise you must have gained publicity and promotion for your cause. The EMNNMS test takes away the hard thinking about where the right place is for you to start.
To complete an EMNNMS test, click on the link below and either fax it back to us on 04 528 2588 or post to us at Foresee Communications. Simply pay $25 (incl. gst) and you will be e-mailed a report which outlines where you are on the continuum and what immediate steps you can take to move to the next stage towards sustainability. We guarantee at least five recommendations to implement straight away.
For $35 (incl gst) you will be mailed a spiral bound hard copy of your report.
Click here for Questionnaire
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