Africa 2100 is looking for an experienced nonprofit development or fundraising professional to help us design a practical operating model for identifying, qualifying, engaging, and cultivating prospective funders.
We have begun building a funding pipeline through prospect research, funder identification, and outreach. Our efforts now need greater structure, ownership, and visibility. We want a repeatable process for moving prospects from identification through qualification, outreach, engagement, cultivation, solicitation, follow-up, and stewardship, with clear ownership and next steps.
This project will focus on designing the fundraising process itself. The operating model will provide the foundation for future CRM implementation in Mailchimp and performance reporting.
What the volunteer would do:
1. Assess our current fundraising workflow — Review how prospects are identified, researched, qualified, contacted, followed up with, cultivated, solicited, and stewarded, and identify gaps.
2. Design the fundraising operating model — Develop an end-to-end process with defined stages, ownership, actions, handoffs, and entry/exit criteria.
3. Define qualification and prioritization criteria — Establish criteria for progressing, prioritizing, pausing, or closing prospects.
4. Create outreach and follow-up workflows — Establish outreach steps, follow-up cadence, responsibilities, and tracking requirements so prospects do not fall through the cracks.
5. Establish pipeline management — Define how prospect status, ownership, next actions, overdue follow-ups, and stalled opportunities are managed and reviewed.
6. Define performance visibility — Establish key metrics covering prospects identified, qualified, contacted, engaged, meetings, responses, solicitations, and stalled opportunities.
7. Document and transfer knowledge — Create SOPs, workflows, and templates and train the team to operate the process independently.
Deliverables
1. Fundraising Operating Model — A documented end-to-end process covering prospect identification, research, qualification, prioritization, outreach, engagement, cultivation, solicitation, follow-up, and stewardship.
2. Prospect Qualification & Prioritization Framework — Clear criteria for qualifying, prioritizing, progressing, pausing, deprioritizing, or closing prospective funders.
3. Fundraising Pipeline Framework — Defined pipeline stages, entry/exit criteria, ownership, required actions, handoffs, and next-action requirements.
4. Outreach & Relationship Management Workflows — Standardized processes for outreach, follow-up, meetings, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, and re-engagement.
5. Pipeline Management & Review Framework — A practical approach for tracking prospect status, ownership, next actions, overdue follow-ups, movement, and stalled opportunities.
6. Fundraising SOPs & Templates — Practical procedures, templates, and guidance supporting consistent execution.
7. Knowledge-Transfer Resources — Documentation and training materials enabling the team to operate and maintain the process independently.
Success Looks Like
Africa 2100 has a clearly defined and repeatable fundraising operating model—not simply a fundraising plan. The team has a shared process for managing prospective funders, with clear stages, qualification criteria, ownership, actions, handoffs, and next steps.
Every active prospect can be managed through a consistent process, and the team can see where prospects are progressing, where follow-ups are overdue, and where opportunities are stalled.
The team has the documentation, workflows, and tools needed to operate the fundraising process independently.
The completed operating model will provide the foundation for future projects focused on Funder CRM Architecture in Mailchimp and Fundraising Performance Dashboard & Continuous Improvement.
