The Essential Fundraising Checklist

Get yourself together and get your funds!

If you are an entrepreneur looking for funding you should really start for a calendar and a checklist to get you organized. Make a fundraising calendar. The best way to track your progress is to use a fundraising calendar. This will help you stay on the good path and keep track of your progress. You can set goals for the number of people you need to contact each day and see how far you've come. You can also use the calendar to keep track of the types of outreach you plan to do. You can set reminders for when you need to send emails or make phone calls. You can also set reminders for events and other important dates. In order to give founders every chance at success, in this article we are presenting you our Fundraising Checklist. It's useful and applicable for both Series A, and early-stage fundraising. If you're looking for a checklist specific to a Series Seed, you can find it here. Let's dive into it!

• Set fundraising goals: Establish realistic goals for your fundraising efforts.
• Identify potential donors: Research and create a list of potential donors.
• Develop a fundraising strategy: Design a strategy for approaching potential donors.
• Build out your team: Attract the talent you need to materialize your idea and show it off.
• Craft a compelling pitch: Create a persuasive, customized pitch for potential donors.
• Reach out to donors: Contact your potentials by phone, emails, in-person meetings'
• Track donations: Track donations to ensure that you are meeting your fundraising goals.

1. Determine Your Fundraising Goal

Establish a clear, achievable goal for your fundraising efforts. This will help you stay focused and measure progress towards success. A fundraising goal is, at its most basic level, the amount of money you need to raise to make your campaign a success. But it's so much more than that. Your fundraising goal is the foundation on which you build your entire campaign. It sets the pace and tone of your campaign, and can make or break it. So how do you figure out what your fundraising goal should be?

Well, it all depends on what you're fundraising for and how much you think you can realistically raise. But there are a few things you can do to make sure you set yourself up for success. First, figure out how much money you need to raise and why you need to raise it. Then, figure out how much you think you can realistically raise. Finally, take these two numbers and use them to calculate your fundraising goal.

2. Identify Potential Donors

You'll need to find potential donors who are willing to provide financial support to your cause. Research potential donors and create a list of individuals or organizations that might be interested in helping.

What is the source of your data? Is it publically available? If your data source is a media outlet, think about the types of consumers that read that content. If your data source is a PR agency, think about the types of consumers that reach out to those agencies. These are all things to keep in mind when you're looking for donors for your cause.

3. Develop a Fundraising Plan

Develop a plan outlining how you will raise funds, including timeline, budget, and strategies for reaching out to potential donors. When you're preparing to launch an idea, the first step is to develop a fundraising plan. This will help you determine how much money you need to launch your project, how you will raise the funds, and how you will use the funds. The first step in developing a fundraising plan is to identify your goal. Once you have a goal in mind, you can begin to identify potential sources of funding, create a fundraising plan, and execute the plan to raise the money you need to launch your business.

4. Build Up Your Team

A great sign to investors that you're good to move to the next level is that you have been able to build your team in the form of both: employees and advisors. You want to show an ability to hire and bring on talent, from universities, top companies or simple remarkable individuals that can benefit the soul of your project. Investors immediately recognize when you can succeed thanks to a diverse talent pool. By the time you are raising series A, you should be able to demonstrate your skills to hire people that bring perspective, quality and experience that shows the team building is a strong thing in your organization. Attracting talent is a sign to investors that you are good and magnetic and people choose you because they want to work with you. So remember to highlight and showcase your hires and their story.

5. Create an Appeal Pitch

Craft an appeal letter or pitch that manages to seduce anyone. When you are pitching for your series A, having a world class design and data in your pitch will make all the difference. So make your deck look simple and fabulous. Have enough data handy in another section or within the deck. You want to leave a good impression of your knowledge, analysis and insight.

6. Reach out to Potential Donors

You don't want your first touchpoint with a VC you're looking to raise from to come right before you start. Ideally develop VC relationships 6+ months in advance of raising to maximize your chances of getting the ones you want. This is important for founders to find the right partner for this journey and also for investors to get to know the company. As a benchmark, you can hope to get on average 1 term sheet for every 20+ introductions. So in building your relationship with investors, identify why the VC is right for you and share that with them. Make your follow-up quickly and be ready with detailed responses to the questions they might have.

7. Do Donations Track

Investors have a mental mindset that is called 'the ladder of proof' which helps them analyze the startups based on a group of predictors. If you could ascend through that ladder of proof in your last funding round, being able to climb a higher one is a good sign of progress for an investor, it means everything is moving in the right track.

Finally

Thank donors: Be appreciative and thankful with donors for their contributions and keep them updated on the progress of your fundraising efforts. Thank donors for their generosity and provide them with a tax receipt if possible. Remember they will want to know every detail of how the deal is going at all stages. Show that you value and honor their investments in a thankful way.

We hope this checklist has been useful for you. If you like this post please share and comment. Thanks for reading!