Public workbook · June Eastham · March 2025
Questions for Agile Strategic Planning in Fund Development
I wrote this workbook to help nonprofit fundraisers and leaders examine funding uncertainty before a deadline or disruption makes every choice urgent.
What it is
Funding disruption rarely belongs to the development department alone. It can change program demand, staffing, cash flow, partnerships, and what an organization must explain to donors and grantmakers.
The workbook combines context, planning questions, reflection prompts, and fill-in worksheets. It asks teams to recover institutional knowledge, test assumptions about funding and programs, map support, prepare multiple scenarios, and decide what information should be monitored before conditions change.
The manuscript says it is written as a fundraiser to fundraisers, while also inviting executives, board members, and program leaders involved in strategic planning to use the material.
The full field of view
The sections move from what the organization already knows to what it may need to do next.
They are connected: an organizational assessment reveals vulnerabilities; resource mapping and funding analysis identify options; program evidence, storytelling, and scenario planning help a team decide how to respond.
Review earlier funding shifts, changes in service demand, operational adjustments, partnerships, failures, and lessons. The aim is to recover knowledge that may otherwise leave with staff or disappear into old files.
Examine mission alignment, revenue concentration, government-funding exposure, cash flow, reserves, program evidence, data systems, staff expertise, and internal communication. These findings create a baseline for planning instead of relying on assumptions.
Map consortia, nonprofit and civic partners, local industries, community foundations, in-kind resources, facilities, volunteer expertise, and other forms of support. The section also asks what collaboration requires—not only what it can provide.
Build mild, moderate, and severe scenarios, then examine individual giving, private foundations, corporate support, federal and state funding, earned income, and program design. Worksheets connect funder strategy to mission fit, capacity, risk, and evidence.
Start with real program conditions and documented change, then gather and share stories with consent, dignity, context, and accuracy. Participant voice and quantitative evidence can complement one another; neither should be manufactured or overstated.
Define disruption tiers, triggers, monitoring responsibilities, immediate actions, communications, and roles. The manuscript is explicit that these templates are a starting point for the first days or weeks—not a complete crisis-management system.
Consider peer knowledge-sharing, shared tools, workload and news boundaries, automation, and careful use of AI. The section emphasizes source verification, organizational policy, privacy, and human review.
From questions to a working baseline
The workbook does not promise one strategy for every organization. It helps a team make its own conditions and choices visible.
Representative questions
These brief excerpts are drawn from the original manuscript. The surrounding sections explain why each question matters and how the answers feed later planning.
“Which major funding sources changed or disappeared?”
“Where is there potential overreliance on a single source?”
“Which programs have overlapping clients or complementary services that would strengthen grant proposals if combined?”
“How will we know we’ve moved from mild to moderate disruption (or from moderate to severe)?”
“What data could you be collecting, and what other mission-relevant outcomes could you be recording?”
“What will you do when demand for services goes up?”
Authentic worksheet structures
Many sections move from reflection questions into a table a team can complete and revisit.
The previews below reproduce representative headings from the manuscript as selectable HTML. They are abbreviated previews, not substitutes for the full workbook.
Section 2
| Funding source | Estimated annual amount | Share of budget | Programs or staff affected | Vulnerability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Federal grants | ||||
| Foundations | ||||
| Individual donors |
The completed table helps a team connect revenue concentration to specific programs and staffing—not merely label a funding source “risky.”
Section 4
| Scenario | Trigger | First 30 days | 30–90 days | 90+ days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mild slowdown | ||||
| Moderate disruption | ||||
| Severe disruption |
Triggers make the scenarios observable. Time horizons help separate immediate stabilization from decisions that require a longer organizational process.
Section 4.7
The exercise keeps activities, evidence, and intended change distinct. Participation counts can document reach; they do not by themselves demonstrate an outcome.
Release & source notes
The full source manuscript is present, and its title page identifies it as a public release.
The complete 6,263-line Markdown manuscript, including the introduction, seven main sections, funding-channel subsections, prompts, tables, and worksheets.
The manuscript’s changelog identifies v1.0 as publicly released in March 2025 and v1.1 as a March 2025 revision to table layout and readability.
The manuscript carries a 2025 copyright notice and a CC BY-NC-ND license. It invites distribution among nonprofit organizations in unadapted form with attribution, for noncommercial use.
A substantive overview, short question excerpts, and abbreviated worksheet structures. The download is an unchanged copy of the source; the site does not invent a cover or claim a purchase offer.
No authentic designed cover or finished visitor-ready PDF was available. The title treatment on this site is typographic, and the current download remains the original Markdown manuscript.
Funding policy, legal interpretations, grant rules, links, and AI product or privacy details described in a 2025 workbook can change. Readers should check current primary sources and their organization’s policies before acting on them.
Use the right tool for the question
The grant-readiness checklist helps organize common application material. The Compass asks wider questions about funding dependencies, program evidence, relationships, scenarios, and capacity.
Questions about the workbook?
The first note can name the planning question, the people involved, and the funding or program change that prompted it.