Are You Actually Ready to Fundraise?

Before you hire another consultant, chase another grant, plan another event, or ask your board for a list of rich friends, ask one question: Are you actually ready to fundraise?

Organizations often respond to financial pressure by immediately looking for more prospects, more grants, another event, a new CRM, or someone new to hire. Sometimes those are the right answers. Sometimes the real problem is somewhere else. Your story is unclear. Your financial needs are vague. Your programs have strong results, but no one knows how to talk about them. Your board has been told to fundraise but has never been given a meaningful role. Donor information lives in multiple spreadsheets, inboxes, and people’s heads. The person responsible for fundraising has six other jobs and no protected time to build relationships, write proposals, follow up, or steward donors.

Are You Actually Ready to Fundraise? is a practical self-assessment workbook designed to help nonprofit leaders figure out what is actually happening before investing more time and money in the wrong solution.

The workbook assesses seven areas of fundraising readiness: Your Story, Programs & Impact, Money & Financials, Leadership & Alignment, Board Engagement, Fundraising Systems, and Capacity.

Inside, you’ll get a 35-question assessment, a category-by-category scorecard, an overall fundraising readiness score, a red flag system for identifying urgent gaps, detailed action pages for all seven areas, specific 30-day action steps, questions for your team to consider, a “What You Think You Need vs. What Your Score May Be Telling You” section, guidance to consider before hiring fundraising support, and a 30-day Fundraising Reality Plan.

This workbook is for executive directors, development professionals, small nonprofit teams, board leaders, and organizations preparing for growth or trying to understand why fundraising feels harder than it should.

Set aside 60 to 90 minutes. Answer honestly. Calculate your scores. Find your two lowest areas. Start there.

A low score is information. Use it. Fundraising gets stronger when you can name what is true, make choices based on that truth, and build from there.

Created by Dani Faulkner, a fundraiser and strategist with more than 15 years of experience helping nonprofits raise money, tell stronger stories, and build fundraising strategies that fit the organizations responsible for carrying them out.