A fundraising campaign is similar to most sales campaigns, and as such, requires an ability to keep track of prospective investors from lead generation through to a closed investment.
Without some kind of system and defined process to manage your prospective investor pipeline, it will be difficult to complete your capital raising efforts with the efficacy that most founders and CEOs really desire, given the competing priorities typically going on at startup or early stage impact business.
Deciding on the type of system that will work best for you and your fundraising effort should be focused around these simple key elements:
- The size of the round of capital being sought
- The minimum investment amount
- The breadth of your current impact investor network
If you are raising a relatively small round of capital in relation to the strength of your impact investor network, then a spreadsheet may suffice. It’s still worth defining your fundraising process and the appropriate stage gates for the type of investment you’ve set up for your impact business.
If you are raising $500K or more, you will likely want to explore using one of the many project management or CRM tools available to today’s entrepreneurs. Here at The Change Agent Hub, we’ve developed a templated Investor Pipeline board in Trello that we have supported impact clients with in their successful fundraising campaigns. It starts with a Prospect List and allows users to move cards (Trello uses a digital kanban style interface) across defined lists (stage gates) until they reach the Closed List or fall out of the pipeline.
Another common toolset to use are any number of the CRM systems available. One of the most popular we have worked with is HubSpot, which allows you to capture all of the critical contact information and communications with your prospective investors. Using their SalesHub tools, you can design an effective pipeline process to take your prospective impact investors through to become aligned capital partners for your business.
With an effective process and system in place, you can stay focused on the most important aspects of the fundraising process, that of garnering the support of aligned capital partners and reaching your fundraising goals.
Want to get prepared to raise capital successfully?
Download our Free Fundraising Checklist Here: https://thechangeagenthub.net/fundraising-checklist
Once you receive the checklist you’ll be redirected to a video walkthrough so you can use this checklist most effectively. And you’ll also be invited to check out our 9-step fundraising preparation roadmap with detailed information called Impact Incubator Immersion. This program is the exact process all our impact clients have used to raise capital successfully.
