How to Build a Fundraising Pipeline

The power of fundraising doesn’t come from frantic activity. It comes from alignment. People keep asking me for some step-by-step guidance here and I've never done one of these styles of posts before....but here it goes: If I were the Chief Development Officer of a nonprofit and needed to significantly increase funding by the end of the calendar year, here’s exactly what I’d do 👇 Step 1: Identify Your Power Partners Not just a big list of names in a database. Instead, identify the 20-30 donors who genuinely align with your mission, values, and current strategic goals. (If you can't name them offhand, this is your starting point.) Step 2: Identify what is truly valuable to each type of funder and how it aligns with their motivations and interests. Step 3: Map Your Assets Understand all of the unique assets your organization brings to the table. Whether it's your social media reach, your storytelling, volunteer opportunities, or deep community engagement. Step 4: Block Time for Real Connection not endless emails or automated stewardship. Focus on authentic, one-on-one conversations. Schedule meetings with clear intentions, rooted in curiosity and mutual benefit. Prioritize these conversations like your fundraising depends on them. Because it does. Step 5: Track Alignment, Not Just Dollars: Fundraising cannot be transactional; it's relational. Track where your donors are in their alignment journey with your mission. Are they excited? Curious? Or drifting away? If you're only tracking dollars raised, you're missing the real indicators of your fundraising health. Step 6: Prioritize Aligned Opportunities: That massive donor who hasn’t responded to outreach in months? They’re not your priority right now. But the donor who just opened up about a personal connection to your cause? Lean into that alignment and nurture it. Always prioritize mutual benefit, strategic alignment, and shared impact. Step 7: Equip Your Team for Alignment Fundraising: If your fundraisers spend hours toggling between unclear tasks, they’re not effectively engaging donors. Provide clear systems and tools that support aligned fundraising, foster authentic relationships, and track meaningful engagement. If you consistently operate from a place of alignment and authenticity, you'll not only see fundraising results but you'll also decrease stress, burnout, and overwhelm. Fundraising is about people. And when you put aligned relationships at the core of your strategy, everything else falls into place. What do you think? What steps did I miss? What else would you add?

The 6 ways I see pipeline generation actually working in 2024: 1) Track job changes of your customers and advocates. Use tools like UserGems 💎 to ensure you dont miss anyone. Reach out to those folks not with an ask, but to keep in touch. Offer value and nurture the relationship. 2) Ask for referrals from your best customers. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. Can they intro you to their former company? Their friend who is at another company? They probably can, you just have to suss out the motivations and WHY they would make this intro. 3) Generate reviews (G2) and case studies from your best customers then use those advocates for reference calls. Platforms like Deeto are simplifying the collection process. Now, all you have to do is ask. 4) Find partners that sell to the same audience and align closely with your mission. Collaborate on joint research studies, podcasts, events, and referrals. There are many ways to partner on things, 1 + 1 can = 3. 5) Ensure you and your exec team are producing thought leadership on LinkedIn. The posts should have a common theme and POV. The key here is actually following up with prospects who fit your ICP that like/comment on all the posts. This seems obvious but isn't always the reality. 6) Curated IRL Events - people want to connect but in the right way. A curated room, with a sizable audience, without an agenda. We do this 12+ times a year at Sales Assembly and it works wonders. What won't work? Sending me a 5 paragraph thesis essay as the first message after we connect on LI then sending me a "did you see my previous message, here's a link to my calendar" follow up 2 days later. TLDR: Reduce the volume, increase the personalization, and ask yourself "would I respond to this?"

I've raised $15M in my career and the majority of it came from investors I had built relationships with years before I started a company this is the lie they tell you in fundraising - "it's a numbers game! you just gotta have a tight process" no! you just need to build authentic relationships. people invest in people they trust. and the closer the relationship, the more trust there is. the larger the investment (the one your lead investor makes) the more trust is required. your background, track record, and traction help, but relationships are where the real trust is built. fortunately building relationships is pretty straightforward these days. here's the playbook: - reply to investors on twitter/linkedin: when investors post, they want engagement. by engaging, you're doing them a solid right off the bat (especially if they don't have a ton of followers), which helps you a lot show up consistently in the comments with smart, positive stuff to say. investors will start recognizing you. recognition breeds trust. eventually, if an investor follows you, just shoot them a DM saying hi. don't ask for anything. - deliver value before asking for anything (goes without saying): for the investors you're building relationships with, figure out what they really want in life/work - usually, it's connections to great startups to invest in and support for their existing ones. if they have a newsletter, just respond to the newsletter, and give some thoughts on what they've written is incredibly valuable and beneficial. you can even send incredibly incredible candidates their way who could be a good fit for their companies. the move is to literally just deliver value to people before you ask them for anything. - send quarterly updates: most importantly, investors invest in lines, not dots. so you need to give investors snapshots of your business (growing and hitting big milestones) for them to want to invest in you. send them an email once a quarter with - what your company does (just to remind them) - a demo video - big wins from the last quarter - what's planned next (that you know you'll achieve) - asks and if you don't have a company, it doesn't mean you can't send quarterly updates. say you're a PM or a software engineer at some company - talk about stuff you've built, ideas you've had, things you've learned its beauty is that it forces you to actually go out and do shit. because at the end of the quarter, you're on the hook. I literally sent my quarterly update out to hundreds of potential investors. talked about all the exciting things we're working on, the big wins we've had, and some key asks in case they want to dive deeper. also threw in an invite to connect over a meeting or call -- the bottom line: all these things are creating opportunities for engagement you want to give them a reason to reach out and start a conversation. pro tip: get people's consent to be part of your quarterly update.

To get the 3 VC checks for our $780k pre-seed, I built an investor pipeline of 300 funds. Here's how underrepresented founders can figure out how many funds they need to target to raise a round of VC funding 👇🏾 Your investor pipeline is a list of funds and angel investors that you're targeting to invest in your round. Like sales, it's a funnel. For every 10 investors on our target list, I got a meeting with 3 of them - a 30% conversion rate. For every 30 meetings, I got 1 check. Unless you're YC-backed or a founder with a great track record, I wouldn't plan on a list-to-meeting conversion rate higher than 50% or a meeting-to-check conversion rate higher than 10%. Once you have these numbers, you need to work backward to figure out how many investors you need on your list. A $1M round will probably break out like this: - 1 lead investor for $500k - 1 follow-on investor for $250k - 1 follow-on investor for $150k - $100k in smaller checks from angels and friends and family So, you need 3 checks to form your round. Now let's work backward to figure out how many funds we need on our target list. Assuming better than average conversion rates of 40% for a meeting and 5% for a check, the math shapes out to: - 3 is 5% of 60 → 𝗪𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝟲𝟬 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 - 60 is 40% of 150 → 𝗪𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝟭𝟱𝟬 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 Note - these numbers are *very* optimistic. Y'all know the deal - work twice as hard for half as much. Plan on your conversion rates to be half that of other founders, which means you'll need to talk to twice as many funds. There's a reason Black founders get less than 1% of VC funding 🤷🏾♂️ Having such a large list sounds like a lot (and it is), but knowing this number makes the process so much easier. Treat it like a game. The sooner you get to 150 investor touches, the sooner you get your money. #venturecapital #fundraising #blackfounders