Volunteer Fundraising Group Assessment

Volunteer fundraisers, you're already doing incredible work to make a difference in your community. But have you ever stopped to think about how your team is really performing? Are there areas where you could use a little boost?

Reflection is an often-overlooked superpower for volunteer fundraising organizations. By taking the time to regularly reflect on what's working (and what's not), you can identify opportunities to improve, celebrate successes, and make informed decisions that drive your mission forward. And yet, in the hustle and bustle of everyday work, it's easy to let reflection fall by the wayside.

But here's the thing: reflection isn't just a nice-to-have - it's a must-have for organizations that want to achieve real impact. By regularly taking stock of your progress, you can:

• Identify areas where you're getting stuck and find ways to overcome obstacles

• Celebrate successes and build on momentum

• Make informed decisions that align with your mission and goals

• Develop a culture of continuous learning and improvement

Take our assessment to find out how your team is doing in key areas like recruitment, leadership, meetings, metrics, fundraising, donor stewardship, coaching, partnerships, and experimentation. You'll get a better sense of where your team is thriving - and where you might need to focus some extra attention.

	0: Brand New	1: Getting Started	2: Growing	3: Coalescing	4: Strong	5: Bursting at the Seams with Success
Recruitment	No recruitment/outreach plan.	Recruitment from within personal networks where a few people have expressed interest in joining.	Some recruitment efforts but sporadic follow-up. A clear leader and some regular volunteers, but no cohesive group.	Recruitment more regular. A clear core group of regular volunteers but no organized division of roles/labor.	Recruiting new members regularly and systematically. There's a division of labor on the team with roles filled.	Robust and routine volunteer recruitment and retention. There are sub-teams or multiple teams dedicated to recruitment.
Leadership Expansion	No established leadership.	1 team leader does everything.	Team leader getting help, but still takes monumental effort on their part to get that help.	Dedicated group, but few or no defined roles. When team leader is not present, team comes to full stop.	At least 3 core team roles defined and filled with people who can initiate or complete tasks. Norms established for meeting times and communications structures.	Enough people in independent leadership positions to weather any storm. Clear norms for meetings, communications, and decision-making.
Meetings	No meetings. Decisions are made during informal discussions.	Long and/or irregular meetings with little or no action & no agenda.	Regular meetings with a clear agenda, but discussions can be disorganized and lacking in focus, requiring follow-up emails and phone calls to clarify decisions and actions. Inconsistent attendance.	Meetings are regular and organized, and action is happening, but not enough team members playing leadership roles, and attendance is sporadic and lower than desired.	Regular, team-led, action-based & effective meetings. Team members attend out of obligation. Core team members help plan and run meeting.	Meetings are on a regular schedule, action-oriented, and fun. Core team members regularly step up to lead.
Metrics	No established metrics or tracking systems in place.	Some talk of total dollars or number of donors goals on an event by event or campaign by campaign basis. No systems in place for tracking.	Some team involvement in goal-setting for events/campaigns, and a sense of ownership over those goals. Data analysis is limited and plays little role in strategic decisions.	The team has longer term goals spanning over multiple events/campaigns. System in place to track metrics and used for informing strategic decisions.	The team has goals covering a planning period established, and has a real time sense of where they stand with respect to all goals. Regular data analysis takes place.	The team has long term goals and is able to track complex metrics. All decision making is data-driven.
Fundraising	No fundraising is taking place. Team is still defining mission and goals.	1-3 members send emails or make social media posts to their networks to fundraise on an ad-hoc basis.	More than 3 members send emails or make social media posts to their networks to fundraise on an ad-hoc basis.	A team of 1-4 people regularly gathers team to plan and/or co-work to reach out to our networks. The bulk of the work (template creation, meeting facilitation, etc.) is held by 1-2 people. Only 1-2 fundraising tactics are used.	A team of 5+ people gathers regularly (weekly or monthly) with everyone holding a clear role and set of tasks. They coach each other, share what is/isn't working for them, and swap language and best practices. Only 1-2 fundraising tactics are used.	Dozens+ people are actively participating in fundraising from their networks. Multiple fundraising tactics are used: events, direct 1-on-1 asks, emails/social media.
Donor Stewardship	No process in place to acknowledge or recognize donors. We only reach out to people in our networks to ask for money.	We send out a monthly or weekly newsletter with updates or opportunities to connect with our fundraising group.	A basic donor recognition plan has been developed, including thank-you notes and social media shoutouts, but in reality, implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent.	A team of 1-4 people are dedicated to thank you calls/cards/emails after someone makes a donation over $X. No timeline (ex: 2-3 days after donation) is expected - people make calls or write cards when they can.	A team of 5+ people are dedicated to thank you calls/cards/emails for every donor. A rough timeline is expected (ex: 2-3 days after donation). There are occasional one-off stewardship activities (ex: donor education/appreciation events).	A team of 10+ people are dedicated to thank you calls/cards/emails for every donor. An exact timeline is expected (ex: 2-3 days after donation). There's a calendar for ongoing stewardship. All stewardship activities are segmented by number of donations, donation amount, and other variables.
Coaching	No coaching is available to team members on fundraising or leadership development.	1 team leader provides ad-hoc coaching on fundraising or leadership development when an urgent issue comes up for a team member.	2-3 team leaders proactively offer coaching on fundraising or leadership development during peak periods (ex: 3 weeks leading up to a fundraising event).	Team leaders offer regular check-ins and goal-setting sessions for team members.	After someone on the team successfully fundraises in their network, they become a coach for other team members who are doing the same.	A robust peer coaching program is in place, with each coach having 2-4 team members they're supporting in fundraising or leadership development. The coaches meet regularly, and there are coaching leaders who support a designated coaching program.
Reflection	No culture of reflection, with little to no time devoted to evaluating progress, discussing challenges, or celebrating successes.	If a team member or donor makes a loud complaint, improvements are made.	Basic debriefing sessions happen informally after major events or campaigns, but reflection is largely focused on surface-level discussions.	When the team remembers or has more time, the team reviews how an event or campaign went through activities like post-mortems or after-action reviews.	Despite how busy the team is, they build in time to review how an event or campaign went through activities like post-mortems or after-action reviews.	Reflection time is built into every meeting, event, and campaign - before, during, and after.
Partnerships	We don't communicate or collaborate with other fundraising groups.	We occasionally have a one-off email exchange or conversation with a fundraising group to share information or a brief introduction.	At the beginning or end of a fundraising cycle, we debrief with at least 1-2 other groups to discuss what is/isn't working, lessons learned, and what we're seeing in the field, but the relationships are still informal.	Partnership development has become a strategic goal, with clear objectives established for deepening relationships with other groups.	We have 1-2 strong fundraising group partnerships where we discuss what is/isn't working, lessons learned on a monthly or quarterly basis. We have explored deeper collaboration or done one-off collaboration (ex: co-hosting an event).	We have multiple fundraising group partnerships where we discuss what is/isn't working, lessons learned on a weekly or monthly basis. We embed deeper collaboration (ex: co-hosting events) in most or all of the fundraising work we do.
Experimentation	No culture of experimentation.	We did an A/B test on an email subject line once.	If a team member is passionate about a new idea and puts in most/all of the effort to execute it, it happens.	There's dedicated time during the team's planning period (ex: beginning of the year) to brainstorm new ideas. Some are implemented. There isn't regular revisiting of new things to try or what is/isn't working.	There's a regular cadence where new ideas are invited, explored, and passed off to be implemented and reflected on their results (monthly or quarterly).	For each event/campaign/outreach, we incorporate new ideas to test out and learn from. In meetings, we have regular brainstorms for new things to try and report-backs on how they went.

If you’re like your own copy of the assesment, you can find a spreadsheet version here!