An essential guide to supporting fundraising strategies for universities

What are the main fundraising strategies for universities?

Broadly speaking, university fundraising income can be divided into two main categories - with 47% of new funds secured coming from individual donors and 53% from “organisational sources” (e.g. companies, trusts, foundations, and lotteries). It’s an important split to note. Recent years have shown us just how quickly the economic landscape can change. A varied portfolio that works across multiple income streams is a great way to help mitigate this risk.

The role of individual giving

Charitable giving is part of the UK psyche, with 3 in every 5 people donating to charity in 2023. In this section, we’ll be looking at individual giving in the context of university fundraising, and the hallmarks of building a strong and sustainable programme.

What is individual giving and why is it important?

“Individual giving” refers to the process of securing personal donations directly from an individual. Separately, these donations are relatively small. Collectively, they are worth tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds. But individual giving isn’t just about the final tally. The real value lies in the nature of the gift. Unlike organisational sources, individual gifts generally come with fewer restrictions – and that means you can allocate funds exactly where they’re needed.

What makes a good individual giving strategy for university fundraising?

While every strategy is unique to its institution, the aim is to develop a combination of activities that work across a variety of different channels (e.g. print, media, digital, face-to-face). This is never random. A good individual giving strategy will take a relationship-based approach that works from initial engagement right through to the final legacy gift.

As a starting point, you need to:

• Define your target audience: before you ask for anything, you need to understand who you’re talking to, where they’re based, and their key characteristics.
• Understand their motivation: what is their connection to your cause, and why do you think they would be receptive to an approach?
• Identify their preferred communications channel: which communication are they more likely to see? And where are they?
• Be clear on your ask and impact: what are you asking for, and how will their donation make a difference?

Remember, donations are just the first step. To convert one-off gifts into a long-term commitment, you need to take your donors on a journey: one that makes them feel part of your university’s mission, and that can be sustained over a long period of time.  

How does major donor giving fit into university fundraising strategies?

Technically speaking, major donor giving is also individual giving - but this time you’re raising more money from a few, high-value donors. It’s an important shift that means you need to be even more targeted in your approach, and:

• Identify your top prospects: creating a shortlist based on their connection to your institution, donation history, motivations and capacity to give.
• Create a tailored engagement plan: there is no one-size fits all, you need to build individual engagement plans that work up to that all-important ask.
• Build relationships: to create meaningful connections, you need to invest in personalised interactions, including face-to-face meetings.
• Stewarding your donors: saying ‘thank you’, providing regular updates, and creating opportunities for continued engagement and discussion.

When targets are high and the pressure is on, it can be tempting to dive straight into the ask. But giving money – particularly large amounts of money – requires a huge amount of trust. So, take a breath and make sure your team have the space and tools they need to get things right.  

Making the most of existing connections

It might sound daunting, but the great thing about university fundraising is that you already have a solid starting point: your graduates.

Where some charities have to spend a lot of time educating the public and raising awareness about their cause, your alumni already have an emotional connection with you. They know you. You are part of their history, their story, and their future. A good individual giving programme will tap into this link, and use it as an entry point to bring potential new donors into the fold.

Want to find out more about how to build and sustain relationships for alumni giving? Keep an eye on our blog series for new releases and information.

Raising funds from organisational sources

Organisational sources accounted for over half of all new philanthropic funding secured by UK universities between 2020-2021. Of these, trusts and foundations were the most lucrative (accounting for 29% of funds). That’s why we want to use this section to shine a light on some of the key markers of a strong foundational giving programme.

What is foundational giving and why is it important?

Trusts and foundations provide grant-based funding to organisations (and individuals) who share in their social vision. Unlike individual giving, when it comes to trusts, you’ll have a small number of organisations making higher-value donations (NB: these can range from hundreds to millions of pounds). Because you’re dealing with higher amounts, you’re more likely to face restrictions, with grants often designated to particular projects with defined budgets, metrics and reporting requirements.

What makes a good foundational giving strategy for university fundraising?

There are currently over 10,000 charitable trusts registered in the UK. You don’t need to apply to them all! The key is to be strategic. Even low-level applications can take hours to prepare, and with hundreds of organisations applying, it’s important that you spend your time on the most promising prospects.

That means:

• Doing your research: take the time to build a strong database of prospects and identify trusts and foundations who share the same values and objectives*.
• Network mapping: the stronger your link, the better. Do you, your team or Board know anyone that works for one of your targets?
• Managing donor schedules: as well as logging donations, you’ll need a robust reporting and application schedule to manage and grow your trust portfolio.
• Developing applications: grant writing is a skill. You might have a core template, but every application requires a tailored approach that takes time!

Trust fundraising is all about relationships. The key here is to make sure you work on two levels: ticking all the technical boxes while creating space for additional communications (event invites, face-to-face meetings, sharing organisational news). The strategy you take will depend on the funder, but remember - behind every application process is a person (or a group of people). The more you can connect with them, the more likely they are to stay with you.

*Not sure where to start? The Access Group is proud to support the Charity Excellence Framework – a free one-stop-shop for charity funding, policies, help and resources.

How an alumni CRM can help build fundraising strategies for universities

Whether you’re looking to build an individual giving programme, or expand your organisational fundraising, a combination of Excel spreadsheets will only get you so far. To take your fundraising to the next level, you need to make sure that your team has the tools they need to deliver.

An alumni CRM is a key part of this, and will help you:

Understand and segment your audience

Our alumni CRM serves as a comprehensive hub for all your donor information, from individual prospects to trusts and foundations. Accessible through a simple, user-friendly interface, deep search capabilities make it easy to rotate and analyse your data so that you can identify different donor groups, and start building a strategic set of donor profiles.   

Individual and major donor prospects can be categorised by a range of criteria, with multi-level segmentation making it easy to develop personal, engaging communications.  

Deliver on prospect and donor management

Our donor management systems will log every interaction you have with prospects and supporters (think conversations, event attendance and donations). This streamlines daily administrative tasks and makes it easy to track your prospects from discovery, to cultivation, donation, and ongoing stewardship. Automated workflows such as ‘thank you’ letters, and a dedicated consent management portal, will help ensure a high-quality donor experience, while leaving your team free to focus on what they do best: fundraising.

For organisations applying to trusts and foundations, our alumni CRM maintains detailed records of all funding prospects, applications, reporting deadlines, past grants and communications. Core information is stored against individual contact records, and it’s easy to assign tasks and workflows to make sure your team stays ahead of the game.

Optimise your campaigns

As well as helping you extract information to develop targeted campaigns, our alumni CRM is there to help you run them.

Our Calling App is the perfect example. Designed to guide you through every step of campaign development, this dedicated module makes it easy to set campaign parameters, write scripts or choose templates, and identify priority contacts. Once your campaign is up and running, integrated features will ensure that all call and donations are logged – with live campaign monitoring supporting data-driven decisions that make every call count.

Fundraising strategies for universities that make the grade

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Whether you’re building an individual giving programme or looking to grow your university’s organisational income, an alumni CRM is there to help your team do more.

We’ll be exploring each of these areas in more detail over the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about our tools and features, simply download our CRM brochure online.

Want to talk to a person? Our expert team is ready and waiting to answer any questions you might have.