Picture a familiar pattern. A grant call appears, and the team drops everything to write a proposal. A board member knows someone at a bank, so a CSR request goes out. December comes, and someone suggests a fundraising dinner. Each activity might succeed. Together they are not a resource mobilization strategy. They are reactions.
Nuts and Bolts of Mobilizing Resources makes the point in one line: resource mobilization activities should be planned, not ad hoc. Success depends on having a vibrant resource mobilization framework in place.
This guide walks through how to build that framework in eight steps based on the book, from checking whether your organization is ready, through choosing which strategies to pursue, to writing the document and turning it into an annual action plan. It is written for NGOs, universities and other institutions in Kenya and across East Africa. At the end you can download a free Word template that follows the same structure.
What is a resource mobilization strategy?
A resource mobilization strategy is the blueprint and guide for an organization's fundraising activities. It sets out the guiding principles and the reason for mobilizing resources, and it defines the scope, methodology, potential partners and sources of funds. Its job is to focus resource mobilization effort, and that focus is what raises the chance of success.
Resource mobilization itself covers every action taken to secure new and additional resources. It also includes making better use of the resources you already have. The strategy turns that broad idea into time-bound, practical, measurable priorities. Because the priorities are written down, you can check progress against them and change course as you go.
An effective resource mobilization process runs in four stages:
- Identify the needs, linked to your strategic plan.
- Map the funding opportunities available to you.
- Develop a responsive strategy.
- Evaluate what was implemented, to learn what drove success.
If you want to see where the strategy sits in the bigger picture, read the five stages of resource mobilization first. The strategy document is the written output of that thinking.
Why does your organization need a resource mobilization strategy?
A strategy is the roadmap that spells out how resources will be leveraged to meet your organization's needs. Specifically, it lets you:
- Build a planned pipeline of resources in advance, instead of starting from zero each time.
- Plan beforehand where resources are needed and which options for raising them are realistic.
- Coordinate how you approach resource partners, so that you build long-lasting relationships rather than one-off transactions.
- Send coherent, clear messages to every resource partner.
- Get the most out of your staff's role in resource mobilization, so their effort is effective and efficient.
- Leave enough time to apply for the grant opportunities that matter.
- Increase your impact by keeping programme delivery consistent.
Resource mobilization strategy vs resource mobilization plan
People often use the two terms interchangeably. In practice, one contains the other.
| Resource mobilization strategy | Resource mobilization (action) plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Time horizon | Multi-year. The goals section asks how much you want to raise over the next five years. | One financial year, broken into quarters |
| Answers | Where are we now, where do we want to be, and which strategies will get us there? | Who does what, by when, with what budget, this year? |
| Contains | Analysis, goals, investment budget, monitoring framework, critical success factors | Priorities, resource gaps, potential funders, actions, responsibilities, Q1–Q4 timing |
| Relationship | The parent document | The final section of the strategy, refreshed every year |
The book's annual action plan template is itself headed "Resources Mobilisation Plan" (Step 8). Build the strategy first, or the plan will have nothing to anchor it.
How to develop a resource mobilization strategy in 8 steps
- Check your organization's readiness.
- Analyse your organization: finances, environment, peers and past efforts.
- Build the "ideal picture" with your team.
- Validate ideas with stakeholders.
- Rank the possible strategies.
- Set goals for each chosen strategy.
- Write the strategy document.
- Turn it into an annual action plan.
Step 1: Check whether your organization is ready
The book is blunt about this step. Without a good readiness status, it is futile to go through the full process of developing a strategy. Readiness also determines which strategies you can realistically use and which types of funder you should approach.
The readiness assessment scores five areas. Each question is answered Yes = 2, In progress = 1, No = 0. Five questions per area gives a maximum of 10 per area and 50 overall.
| Area | What the five questions test |
|---|---|
| Institutional readiness | Approved formal statements and charter; clear vision and mission; identified objectives and beneficiaries; a programme that is easy to communicate; a clear, realistic budget |
| Human resource | An active board; paid staff; a dedicated fundraiser; volunteers; staff and stakeholders committed to the objectives |
| Leadership and planning | Clear division of responsibilities; a clear decision-making process; M&E of activities; a fundraising strategy; evaluations fed into future planning |
| Stakeholders | A diversified funding base; regular stakeholder communication; media use to tell the public about your work; an easily communicated programme; collaboration with partners |
| Case for support | An existing case for support that describes your mission and vision, your programmes and beneficiaries, and your financial and resource needs, and that you adapt for each campaign or donor |
The book adds a practical systems check alongside the score. Can you track donor information and giving history in a database? Do you deposit cheques within three days of receipt? Can you acknowledge a gift with a thank-you note or letter within one to three days of receiving it? Do you update donors regularly through newsletters and annual reports? It also asks about your donor base: how many donors you have per income stream, how often and at what level they give, and how long they have supported you.
The free template at the end of this guide includes all 25 questions as a scoring sheet.
Step 2: Analyse your organization: finances, environment, peers and past efforts
Take stock of where you stand before deciding where to go. The organizational analysis has four parts: a financial analysis, an analysis of the internal and external environment (PESTLE and SWOT), a peer analysis, and a review of the strategies you have used so far.
Financial analysis. Start with your annual accounts. They typically contain four statements: the balance sheet (statement of financial position), the statement of financial performance, the statement of changes in equity or fund balances, and the statement of cash flows. The balance sheet and the statement of financial performance matter most here. The performance statement shows revenue by source of funding, and the notes usually break it down by donor. If a line such as "donations" is large and broad, ask your accountant to break it down further. Tracked year on year, these figures let you compare your resource mobilization performance over time.
Environment: PESTLE analysis. Run it as a team workshop with one set of questions per factor:
| Factor | The question to discuss |
|---|---|
| Political | What is the political situation and how can it affect us? |
| Economic | What economic factors are prevalent? |
| Social | What social dynamics and cultural factors influence us? |
| Technological | What technological environment do we operate in, and which innovations could affect us? |
| Legal | Which current laws affect us, and are changes foreseeable? |
| Environmental | Which environmental concerns affect us? |
Environment: SWOT analysis. Map strengths (what you are good at and renowned for, your tangible assets), weaknesses (what you lack, what others do better, your resource limits), opportunities (unused markets, unique selling points, unused resources) and threats (internal or external factors that could hurt you). Record the different views of staff, board and stakeholders, and discuss them openly.
Peer organization analysis. Pick organizations in your sector, of a similar size, or ones you can learn from. For each, collect four things: their annual budget, their main resource mobilization strategies, the channels and audiences they raise income from, and how their funding messages talk to donors. Then ask: What works for them that we could apply? What does not work, and could we adapt it? Which strategies do they under-use, and is that our opening? What makes us different?
Review of past strategies. Organizations often fail to recognise their own efforts as strategies because they were pursued randomly. In a workshop with staff from junior to senior level, go through each resource mobilization category and ask: Have we used this? How exactly? What were the planning and execution processes? Were we successful? What went well? What was hard? How could we improve? Structuring the discussion this way lets you detect a pattern in your resource mobilization.
Step 3: Build the "ideal picture" with your team
With the analysis in hand, agree as a team on what good resource mobilization would look like for your organization. The book calls this the Ideal Picture: a best-case scenario for sustainable, attractive funding, based on the organizational and peer analysis, that looks beyond the way you are funded today.
How to run it:
- Bring together 5–10 people from different levels of the organization: including but not limited to management, board, programme and communication.
- Appoint one facilitator. They can contribute, but they also guide the process.
- Brainstorm as a group on one question: How could the organization create income? Capture every idea on a flipchart.
- Work individually on an ideal picture. If the organization could speak, how would it want its resource mobilization to look? Which strategies and channels would it use?
- For each strategy, answer four questions: How much do we want to raise? From which resource partners? Over what timeframe? For what purpose?
- Present, collect and discuss the individual pictures, then review them against the results of your organizational and environmental analysis.
The writing can start here. Appoint writing champions now (see Step 7) so the thinking is captured as it happens.
Step 4: Validate the ideas with stakeholders
Engage key stakeholders early. Their views help you understand the context, reveal funding pathways you had not considered, and build ownership of the strategy across the organization.
A short workshop is enough. Invite a limited number of people from programmes, field offices, finance, management and the board, and potentially some resource partners. The workshop has four goals:
- Orient stakeholders on the goal of the strategy.
- Share the findings of the organizational analysis and the strategy ideas so far.
- Collect more resource mobilization options and hear how people feel about them.
- Refine the strategy with insights on audiences, messages, activities and communication channels.
Step 5: Rank the strategies, where the lowest score wins
You now have a long list of possible approaches. You cannot pursue all of them. The book gives a scoring matrix for deciding.
Rate each strategy on five criteria. On every scale, a lower number is better:
| Criterion | Scale | How to score |
|---|---|---|
| Benefit | 10–1 | 10 = no or very low income; 1 = the highest income you can imagine |
| Cost | 0–10 | 0 = no cost; 10 = a very high capital outlay |
| Staff time | 0–10 | 0 = no staff time needed; 10 = intensive involvement, possibly new hires |
| Sustainability | 0–10 | 0 = income lasts more than 10 years; 1 = 8–9 years; 2 = 7–8; 3 = 6–7; 4 = 5–6; 5 = 4–5; 6 = 3–4; 7 = 2–3; 8 = 1–2 years; 9 = 6–12 months; 10 = 0–6 months |
| Risk and constraints | 0–10 | 0 = no risk; 5 = likely to succeed but with risks to mitigate; 10 = major constraints, success unlikely |
Add the five scores for each strategy (maximum 50) and rank them. The lowest total is the most favoured strategy.
Here is how that might look for a mid-sized community health NGO in western Kenya. The scores are illustrative, to show the mechanics. They are not benchmarks, and your own scores will differ.
| Strategy | Benefit | Cost | Staff time | Sustainability | Risk | Total | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Board giving and board-opened doors | 7 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 19 | 1 |
| Monthly individual giving via M-Pesa | 6 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 23 | 2 |
| Corporate CSR partnership | 4 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 5 | 25 | 3 |
| Earned income from training fees | 7 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 26 | 4 |
| Institutional grants (bilateral and foundation) | 2 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 27 | 5 |
| Annual fundraising dinner | 6 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 34 | 6 |
The example shows the matrix's value. Institutional grants score best on benefit, because they bring the biggest sums. But in this example they score as staff-heavy, short-lived and risky, so they land fifth overall. The dinner finishes last on cost, staff time and sustainability.
Ranking does not mean dropping everything below first place. Diversification keeps your funding base stable. The ranking tells you where to invest first, given the staff time and money you have and when you need the income.
Step 6: Set goals for each chosen strategy
For every strategy you keep, set concrete goals. The book's planning matrix uses seven columns:
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| Resource partners targeted | How many partners you will approach with this strategy |
| Acquisition channel | For example the number of proposals, donor calls, meetings, events or social media campaigns |
| Communication and cultivation channel | How you will stay in touch, what you will share, and how often |
| Human resources required | Who does the work, and whether you need to hire |
| Timeline | When the actions happen, and by when you expect income |
| Costs | Implementation costs such as media house fees, airing costs, printing and spot production |
| Expected income | What this strategy should bring in |
Total the matrix. You now have the expected income across all strategies, the investment needed to get it, and an estimate of return on investment. Vary the assumptions and you can model different scenarios, which gives your board real choices on priorities and budget.
For the institutional-partner side of this matrix, donor mapping is how you research which resource partners to count in "resource partners targeted".
Step 7: Write the strategy document
Writing starts as early as the ideal picture exercise. Two roles make it manageable:
- Writing champions, appointed early, who take notes throughout and draft their own sections.
- A coordinator who keeps timelines and makes sure drafts arrive at an even quality.
The book gives three rules for the result. Keep it simple: the best strategies are simple and clear. Keep it up to date: review and adapt it regularly rather than leaving it in a drawer. Track your progress: set targets and an annual calendar of activities so you can measure against them.
A standard resource mobilization strategy has nine sections:
| # | Section | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | — |
| 2 | Mission, vision and values for resource mobilization; guiding principles | Your mission, vision and values as they apply to resource mobilization, and your guiding principles |
| 3 | Analysis of your resource mobilization history | Which strategies have we used so far (events, crowdfunding, grants, partnerships), and how well did they work? |
| 4 | Organizational analysis | Financial analysis from the annual accounts; who our supporters are today; the case for support; PESTLE; SWOT; resource gap analysis; potential income streams |
| 5 | Goals, objectives and key outputs | How much do we want to raise over the next five years, from which sources, over what timeframe, for which purpose, and through which activities? What can we invest, and what constraints apply? |
| 6 | Investment budget | What resources do we need to reach the target? How much can we afford to spend? Which approaches give the return we want, and how long will it take? |
| 7 | Monitoring framework | How will we judge whether each approach is working, and who is responsible for the review? |
| 8 | Critical success factors | — |
| 9 | Annual action plan | A timeline with responsibilities for specific work periods, so you can regularly check you are on track (Step 8) |
The free template below contains all nine sections with the book's guiding questions in place, plus short writing prompts for the sections the book leaves as headings. Delete the prompts once you have answered them.
Step 8: Turn it into an annual action plan
The book's RM strategy matrix sets out, for each key priority of the year:
| Key priority | Resources needed | Resources available | Resource gap | Potential funders | Strategic actions | Budget required | Responsibility | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|
The resource gap is needed minus available. The point of the plan, in the book's words, is a timeline with responsibilities for specific work periods, so that you can regularly check whether things are on the right track.
Key elements of a resource mobilization strategy: a checklist
Before you call the strategy finished, check that it covers each of these elements:
- Readiness: a programme document, and clear priorities and needs.
- Comparative advantage: why would a donor fund you?
- Resource requirements: your internal resource situation.
- External resource situation: resource mobilization trends locally, nationally, regionally and globally, and a SWOT.
- Goal, intended outcomes and guiding principles for engagement.
- Resource partners identified, with their interests matched to yours.
- Action plan
- M&E strategy
- Budget
- Critical success factors
- Compiled and launched, so the strategy is shared, not just filed.
Four mistakes that sink resource mobilization strategies
- Skipping the readiness check. Without good readiness, developing the full strategy is futile. Readiness determines which strategies and which funders are realistic.
- Not recognising past efforts as strategies. Events, grant applications and corporate asks that happened randomly still hold lessons. Review them before planning new ones.
- Pursuing everything at once. The book asks you to rate and rank strategies because time and resources are limited. The scoring matrix forces a choice.
- Filing it in a drawer. A strategy stowed away in a drawer is never looked at again. Review and adapt it regularly, and track it against an annual calendar of activities.
Where the communication strategy fits
Communication is another key factor in resource mobilization success. Nuts and Bolts follows the resource mobilization strategy immediately with a communication strategy, because donors live and feed on communication about your organization and its programmes. The communication strategy supports the execution of your resource mobilization strategy. For the relationship side, see how to get donors to fund your project, which covers donor cultivation.
Download the free resource mobilization strategy template
The free resource mobilization strategy template is an editable Word document that follows this guide section by section. It includes:
- the 25-question readiness assessment with scoring;
- the nine-section strategy structure with guiding questions and prompts;
- the strategy ranking matrix;
- the strategy planning matrix;
- the annual action plan matrix.
If your team would rather build the strategy with a facilitator than alone, see what working with a resource mobilization consultant involves, or join a resource mobilization training cohort. The full method is in Dr. James Njagu's book, Nuts and Bolts of Mobilizing Resources.
Frequently asked questions
What is a resource mobilization strategy?
A resource mobilization strategy is the blueprint and guide for an organization's fundraising activities. It sets out the guiding principles for mobilizing resources and defines the scope, methodology, potential partners and sources of funds, so that effort is focused and the chance of success rises.
How do you develop a resource mobilization strategy?
Work through eight steps: check readiness, analyse your finances, environment, peers and past efforts, build an ideal picture with your team, validate it with stakeholders, rank the possible strategies, set goals for each chosen strategy, write the document, and turn it into an annual action plan.
What are the key elements of a resource mobilization strategy?
The key elements are a readiness assessment, your comparative advantage, your resource requirements, an analysis of the external resource situation including a SWOT, goals and guiding principles, identified resource partners matched to your interests, an action plan, an M&E strategy, a budget, critical success factors, and a launch.
What is the difference between a resource mobilization strategy and a resource mobilization plan?
The strategy is the multi-year document that sets goals, analyses the organization and chooses which approaches to use. The plan, usually called the annual action plan, is its final section. It lists each year's priorities, resource gaps, potential funders, actions, budgets and owners by quarter.
How many years should a resource mobilization strategy cover?
The goals section of a standard strategy asks how much the organization wants to raise over the next five years. The annual action plan inside it covers one financial year and is rebuilt each year.
Who should write a resource mobilization strategy?
The strategy is a team product. A group of 5–10 people from management, the board, programmes and communication builds the ideal picture. Writing champions draft their own sections, and a coordinator keeps timelines and quality consistent.