A. Successful fundraising is not based on a ratio of money spent to money raised. Seeking experienced, long-term volunteers and enabling them to take charge of fundraising may cost you nothing more than the time it takes to train and supervise them. Unfortunately, even with a host of baby boomers searching for meaningful work in retirement, few organizations will offer their volunteers this type of opportunity. Instead, valuable skills will be wasted stuffing envelopes.

Many organizations seeking lower development costs choose to train current staff to take on additional responsibilities. Of course, overworked employees will not provide the results you seek. You may be better served to reorganize the responsibilities of staff to redirect these human resources to your fundraising program. This has an added benefit of providing staff with growth opportunities. And, a happy staff often produces better results.