Audits, Assessments and Fund Development Planning
Uncover the Gaps. Build the Plan. Raise More.
“They taught us a whole bunch of things informally along the way about best practices, standards and processes. And the formal assessment was fundamental to how we decided to move forward in reshaping the team and in reconfiguring it across the broader external facing elements of the organization. In every way, the engagement with Global Philanthropic was very positive and fruitful for us.”
Every Canadian nonprofit has hidden potential. The challenge is finding it, and knowing what to do next.
Global Philanthropic Canada provides a wide range of tailored audits and assessments to help organizations across the sector move from reactive to strategic fundraising. Whatever your challenge—donor retention, annual giving, or campaign planning—our seasoned consultants deliver the clarity and strategy to move with confidence.
What makes Global different? Our assessments don’t follow a cookie-cutter format. We listen carefully, assess thoroughly, and provide you with a practical, customized roadmap aligned with your mission, size, culture and capacity. This process provides your organization with a springboard to maximize efficiencies and drive success.
Why organizations like yours choose audits before fund development planning
- Identify gaps or challenges within your current systems, data, staffing and strategy.
- Align internal and external perspectives to avoid future roadblocks.
- Uncover untapped opportunities hidden in your donor base or culture.
- Identify quick wins and longer term strategies to increase revenue.
- Move forward with confidence—because you know where you're starting from.
- Compare your organization's current state and discover your ideal state.
Below are some examples of how audits and assessments, when paired with a fund development plan, set your shop up for success.
Donor Retention Challenges in Canada
Fundraising audits help you assess current retention practices, system gaps, and stewardship experiences—critical steps to improve loyalty and lifetime donor value.
In Canada, only about 43% of donors return after their initial gift.1
Nearly 1 in 4 donors stop giving due to perceived lack of transparency or unclear impact of their contributions.2
Fundraiser Resource Limitations
Assessments like staffing reviews and process audits highlight operational bottlenecks and help you prioritize resource allocation effectively.
A striking 82% of fundraisers report that limited staff and resources hamper efforts to retain donors—not donor fatigue.3
Reputation & Transparency Gains from Audits
Organizations with clear audit processes and financial reporting are seen as more dependable—boosting donor trust, fundraising appeal, and credibility with funders.
Independent audits are recognized as a key signal of accountability, enhancing stakeholder confidence and eligibility for certain funding streams.4
1_ https://www.canadahelps.org/media/Digital-Donor-Retention-Achieve-Fundraising-Success-with-Current-Donors_CanadaHelps.pdf 2_https://hilborn-charityenews.ca/articles/data-report-identifies-gap-between-donor-expectations 3_https://hilborn-charityenews.ca/articles/data-report-identifies-gap-between-donor-expectations 4_https://www.v-comply.com/blog/which-state-require-non-profit-audits/
How assessments & audits connect to fund development planning
Think of audits as loading the route maps into your “fundraising GPS.” They tell you where you are, what’s working, and what’s slowing you down—so you can plan your best route forward.
Once we’ve helped uncover your current position, our Fund Development Planning service takes over. This is where we help you build a comprehensive strategy based on your assessment and aligned to your goals, capacity, donor base and external landscape. These plans can be mapped over a period of 1 to 5 years. They often include:
- Prioritized fundraising strategies and targets.
- Resourcing and staffing recommendations.
- Donor segmentation and engagement plans.
- Infrastructure and process improvements.
- Campaign or program-level recommendations.
Together, these assessments and plans help organizations go beyond annual tactics and build sustainable fundraising success.
No matter the size or mission of your organization, every strong fundraising strategy starts with a clear view
The services below are all pieces of your fundraising puzzle! We encourage you to reach out to a Global Senior Consultant to discuss undergoing an audit or assessment below, designed to maximize your fundraising potential:
Stewardship Audit Overview
Staffing Assessment Overview
Cultural Perception Audit Overview
Donor & Program Performance Offerings
- Stewardship Audit: Learn how existing and lapsed donors perceive the results of their support through the client’s donor recognition and stewardship program. Best done post-campaign, we interview top donors to evaluate their philanthropic journey and both formal and informal donor experiences to gauge appetite for future support.
- Annual Giving Program & Data Audit: Assess and optimize key elements of your program and uncover hidden revenue opportunities to drive new or improved strategies. This multi-step process examines donor base composition, fundraising performance, use of fundraising channels, past results, structure and processes and team member roles. Key gaps and recommendations for improvements are identified.
- Naming Assessment: Review and provide feedback about what has been developed by an organization (potentially implemented) and compares it to best practice and the vision of the organization.
- External Benchmarking: Assess strategies and growth opportunities against sector best practices and industry standards. Gain an independent comparative view of your fundraising performance metrics against up to 10 comparable organizations in the market.
- Pipeline Audit:Evaluate the strength and sustainability of your fundraising pipeline to receive practical recommendations to build a healthier, more predictable revenue pipeline aligned with priorities. Covering all pipeline stages, we assess elements such as: data quality, giving potential, qualification processes, staff roles, cultivation practices, and conversion rates.
- Feasibility/Planning Study: Through confidential interviews with top donors, volunteers, community leaders, and key collaborators (supported by data analysis and strategic internal review) we assess your case for support, fundraising potential, leadership engagement, and market appetite. Refine goals, identify potential donors and volunteers, flag risks, and shape a campaign plan grounded in real donor insight.
- Campaign Readiness Assessment: This assessment reviews internal systems, staffing capacity, volunteer leadership, case materials, prospect pipeline strength, and organizational alignment with your goals. Receive actionable insights on what’s strong, what needs tightening, and the essential next steps to confidently move into campaign mode.
Internal Readiness & Culture Offerings
- Internal Readiness Audit: Raise money for charity armed with an understanding of gaps and issues around your fundraising program performance, governance, operations, volunteers and staffing. This is an important precursor for a capital campaign and includes key interviews, review of fundamental performance metrics and gap analysis on existing and required capacity to undertake a campaign.
- Cultural Perception Audit: Understand your organizational culture of philanthropy, internal audience positioning, key player readiness and strategic implications through this assessment of perception gaps in philanthropic performance and culture amongst key contacts. The survey is conducted online to measure gaps in knowledge, perceptions and alignment through key areas of advancement practice. The report and data analysis are excellent tools to understand the strength of the foundations upon which strategic fundraising must be built.
- Staffing Assessment: Identify the strengths and opportunities of the existing functionality of your development shop. This is a practical analysis of strengths and weaknesses of existing staff functionality and factors affecting resourcing.
- IDEA Analysis: Conduct a survey to capture organizational or team demographics and understand the experiences of employees at a deeper level. Provide analysis and comprehensive report as well as presentation of results.
Systems & Operations Offerings
- CRM Selection & Implementation: Implement or upgrade a customer relationship management (CRM) platform best suited to your strategic fundraising plan. We undertake project management of the selection process, including sourcing, evaluating and recommending the best fit for your organization.
- Data Management Process Analysis: Develop more effective information gathering by assessing your data management methods and strategies against your goals. We evaluate and recommend enhancements to your current data processes and technology practices against best practices, including a needs analysis for current and future fundraising programs.
- Database Assessment: Let us come play in your database! We will analyze how your database is working for you and what you could improve upon to maximize potential.
- Database Cleaning: We support your organization to attend to National Change of Addresses and scrub inactive donors.
Now with the routes in place, you're ready to go with your fund development plan
The results of the Assessment feed the evolutionary growth of your one to five-year fund development plan. This plan is a comprehensive document that combines an easy-to-follow spreadsheet of activities and strategies with an explanatory dialogue detailing rationales and best practices to back up the plan. It also includes a full one to five-year budget set up in excel for simple manipulation and updating, for both revenue and expense projections for fundraising (and associated functions). This plan covers all potential fundraising streams/portfolios.
Clients We've Supported
Why choose Global Philanthropic Canada for fund development planning?
In fundraising has been collectively raised by our team of 43 Senior Consultants
of our Senior Consultants have served as a volunteer on a Board of Directors, and over 76% currently volunteer their time with a nonprofit organization.
organizations large and small from coast to coast to coast, with over 61% returning as clients in 2025.
“I think Global Philanthropic did an awesome job stepping us back from the campaign launch, refocusing the team and resetting the campaign launch.
They looked at gaps in the program and in operations, developed solutions that I think were sensible, highly effective, and respectful to the Advancement Team and TRU, especially given the circumstances. Global got us back to a spot where we could launch it, they added potential donors to our prospect list, they assisted in the search for a new VP External Relations, and they helped to make transition to new leadership absolutely flawless.TRU is better for having worked with Global Philanthropic Canada.”
“After our experience with Global, we wish we had engaged them sooner. While we were initially hesitant about using an external consultant – who may not have deep knowledge of our work – our fears were proven wrong. Had we engaged Global sooner, we would have been further ahead in our plan and had happier donors. We learned the importance of not only sourcing funds but stewardship of donors. Global Philanthropic Canada has resources in many areas including technology and training. We had a member of their team act as our Director until we recruited a permanent position. We included Global in our all-staff conference and they provided training to instill a practice of philanthropy. The surprise was how vast their network and skillset is! They were able to tackle all our needs in such a way that we were able to quickly implement recommendations and see results.”
“Fundraising resources were a big challenge. Getting talent in our market right now – high quality talent – is everybody’s problem. They [Global Philanthropic Canada] created a fantastic strategic fundraising gift plan for our capital campaign. We were able to hit the ground running. Dora really helped elevate our fund development function so that we could really take our fundraising to the next level. Dora has an ability to cut to the chase, keep things simple, make things really tangible and actionable.”
