It's not over until the Fundraising Handover is complete

It’s not over until the Fundraising Handover is complete

If the idea of downloading information from your fundraising committee sounds too Brave New World-ish, you may need to find out about fundraising handover reports!

Once the last person’s exited an event—or the last order has been delivered—it’s easy to think “that’s a wrap”.

But there’s one more essential step in fundraising that often gets overlooked. That’s the handover.

Why a fundraising handover is important

Fundraising committee members have so much information in their heads, as well as invariably on scraps of paper, and different people may know different aspects. What happens to all knowledge if the committee members leave your group or don’t volunteer next year? Do you really want to face reinventing the wheel? A fundraising handover overcomes this issue.

What’s involved in a fundraising handover

When we talk ‘handover’, we’re not being literal. You don’t have to have someone already lined up for next year’s fundraising efforts.
Instead, think of handover as a process involving documentation of what happened.
Sounds time-consuming? It’s not! Our fundraising handover template makes it easy – I promise!

Essential elements of a fundraising handover

Key dates
Contact details of suppliers
Contact details of sponsors
Profit and loss statement
Contact details of volunteers/helpers
Quantities of goods purchased – and what was left over. Remember, leftovers are profit eaters.
If there are leftovers products, detail where they are stored.

Adding extra value

Your fundraising handover manual can also include details that may save future fundraising committees time, effort and angst.

Detail specific tasks that needed to be done.
Identify skills that could have been useful—bear this need in mind when recruiting volunteers.
Answer 4 critical questions honestly:

What aspects of this fundraiser worked well?
What aspects of this fundraiser did not work?
Would I use this supplier again? Explain why/why not.
Is this fundraiser a ‘goer’ for this group in the future? Would you do it again?

Paperless

You can still have a ‘handover manual’ without phone book (remember those) sized folders to lug around. Dropbox and Google Drive have now made it easy to share reports and store them for future fundraisers. Just make sure your file system is set up with a structure in mind so that you don’t have to look through a million files to find the one you need. If you aren’t sure about it talk to your treasurer or secretary – they’ll be able to help you. A great feature of these systems is being able to share a specific folder with an individual rather than them having access to everything. That way if you have someone volunteer to co-ordinate a particular event they can have the folders relevant to them shared.

Mandy Weidmann is Australia’s ‘Fundraising Whisperer’ – publisher of the Fundraising Directory and author of the Practical Fundraising Handbook for School and Club Volunteers. Mandy believes that parent volunteers shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time and is passionate about providing resources to make fundraising easier (and more fun). Click here to learn more about school and club fundraising ideas in Australia.

Originally published 27 September, 2017