Drop of Water (DoW) is a youth-led nonprofit working to expand access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene in underserved rural communities in Ethiopia. As our organization grows, we want to build a stronger and more sustainable base of individual and community supporters in the United States.

To date, our fundraising has relied significantly on institutional grants and foundation partnerships. These partnerships are essential to our growth, but we also want to develop a broader community of people who personally connect with our mission and can support, participate in, and advocate for our work.

We have several promising ideas and early initiatives—including our Walk for Water 5K, birthday fundraising, online campaigns, peer-to-peer fundraising, monthly giving, church and university engagement, corporate employee giving, and our emerging “Add a Drop” concept. However, we have not yet developed a clear strategy for determining which approaches should be our priorities or how they should work together.

We are seeking a fundraising strategist to help us step back from these individual ideas and identify the 2–3 fundraising channels with the strongest near-term potential for DoW based on our mission, current capacity, audience, and existing opportunities.

We also need to understand how someone moves from being introduced to DoW to becoming a first-time donor, repeat donor, monthly supporter, fundraiser, advocate, or long-term member of the DoW community.

This project will help us establish a focused foundation before investing time and resources into developing individual campaigns and fundraising systems.

The consultant will work with DoW to develop a focused Grassroots Fundraising Strategy centered on the 2–3 most promising near-term fundraising channels for the organization.

The project should result in:

-A strategic assessment of DoW’s current fundraising opportunities and audience
-Identification and prioritization of 2–3 high-potential grassroots fundraising channels for the next phase of DoW’s growth
-Clear rationale for why these channels should be prioritized and how they fit DoW’s mission, audience, and organizational capacity
-A simple supporter/donor journey framework showing how individuals can move from first discovering DoW to becoming donors, repeat supporters, monthly donors, peer-to-peer fundraisers, ambassadors, and long-term advocates
-Recommendations for how the prioritized channels can complement one another and create a stronger overall supporter community
-Initial goals or success indicators that DoW can use to evaluate these channels

The deliverable should provide DoW with a clear strategic foundation and help us answer:

Who are we trying to engage, which fundraising channels should we prioritize, and how do we turn a first-time supporter into a long-term member of the DoW community?

A successful project will give DoW a focused fundraising direction and a clear basis for a future implementation project, including campaign development, systems, tools, and an implementation roadmap.

Organization Mission

Drop of Water is a non profit working in provision of access to safe drinking water , promote proper hygiene and sanitation practices in Ethiopia.