Know where your fundraising is heading
If you continue with your current fundraising portfolio and investment choices, where will your fundraising be in five years?
Forward is a long-term fundraising planning, monitoring and profitability tool that helps you understand where today’s choices will take you, and what needs to change to achieve your ambition.
The gap is where the real conversation starts
Your current course creates a future based on today’s fundraising portfolio, performance and investment levels. But that future may not deliver the income, donor base or profitability you want five years from now.
That is where long-term planning becomes useful. Forward helps you make the assumptions behind your fundraising explicit, build a baseline for where your current course is taking you, and compare that with your ambition.
If there is a gap, you can test different scenarios before making decisions. What happens if you acquire more, or better donors? Improve retention? Increase gift value? Diversify channels, propositions or income sources? Invest more, or invest differently?
Forward brings those choices together and shows their long-term impact on donors, gross income, investment, net income, ROI and LTV.
It helps turn ambition into a clearer path for growth — so you can make bolder choices, invest with more confidence and build the fundraising programme you want to have five years from now.
What Forward helps you do
Forward brings long-term planning, profitability and monitoring together in one way of working.
1. See where you are heading
Build a five-year view of your fundraising and understand where your current choices are taking you.
2. Understand what drives growth
See how acquisition, gift value, retention, donor development and investment combine to shape future performance.
4. Make better investment decisions
Understand the long-term effect of different investments on donors, gross income, net income, ROI and LTV.
5. Keep your plans on course
Compare actual performance with your plan, update your forecast and see where your fundraising is now heading.
3. Compare different scenarios
Test alternative assumptions and choices before committing budget and resources.
Built for ambitious fundraising teams
Forward is used by fundraising teams that want to look beyond the annual budget and make better long-term decisions about income growth, investment and profitability.
“Forward forces you to ask the tough questions every fundraiser needs to ask about their programmes and their profitability.”
Eva van der Zee, Fundraising & Engagement Director - Greenpeace Netherlands
Long term planning - plan beyond next year
Annual budgets tell you what you plan to do next year. Forward helps you understand where those choices are taking your fundraising over the next five years.
Build a baseline from your current fundraising portfolio and assumptions. Compare that with your ambition, then test different scenarios for acquisition, retention, gift value, diversification and investment.
This gives you a clearer view of what needs to change, what it may cost and what kind of growth is realistically achievable over time.
With Forward you can:
build a five-year fundraising baseline;
make key assumptions explicit;
compare your current trajectory with your ambition;
test alternative growth and investment scenarios;
understand the long-term consequences of today’s choices.
Explore Long Term Planning →
Profitability - understand long-term returns
Fundraising growth is not only about raising more income. It also matters what it costs to generate that income, how long it takes to earn back the investment and how much value donors create over time.
Forward brings income and investment together, so you can compare the long-term profitability of different fundraising choices.
It helps you look beyond individual metrics such as CPA or short-term ROI and understand the bigger picture: donor value, net income, payback, ROI and LTV over several years.
With Forward you can:
compare income and investment over time;
calculate net income, ROI and LTV;
assess the profitability of different donor segments and activities;
understand payback periods;
compare the financial impact of alternative investment scenarios.
Explore Profitability →
Monitoring - learn and adjust
A long-term plan only remains useful if you keep updating it as reality changes.
Forward helps you compare actual performance with your plan, understand which fundraising drivers are changing and update your forecast throughout the year.
By combining actuals with your latest forecast, Forward creates an updated view of where your fundraising is now heading.
With Forward you can:
compare plan and actual performance;
monitor the drivers behind the results;
update your forecast during the year;
create a Latest Estimate;
see how current performance changes your longer-term trajectory;
adjust plans and investment decisions when needed.
Explore Monitoring →
USER CASE: Leprastichting
Forward helps fundraising teams bring long-term ambition, investment and performance together in one planning process.
For Leprastichting, this means looking beyond annual targets and understanding how choices around acquisition, donor development and investment affect future income and profitability.
By making assumptions explicit and comparing different scenarios, Forward provides a stronger basis for planning, investment decisions and ongoing monitoring.
Build the fundraising programme you want to have five years from now
Forward helps you look beyond next year, understand the long-term consequences of today’s choices and make better decisions about growth, investment and profitability.
Bring ambition, planning and performance together, and keep adjusting as reality changes.