Donor Readiness for Nonprofits: What Evidence Should Be Ready Before You Ask for Support?
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A prospective supporter needs to understand what your organisation does well enough to decide whether to help. Your team may know the programme in detail, but a person encountering it for the first time has to work out why it matters, what you contribute and what their support would pay for. Preparing those answers is part of donor readiness.
For Nigerian non-profits, this preparation may serve a foundation application, a corporate partnership discussion or an individual donor meeting. Each asks for a different level of detail. A short introduction can establish interest; a funding decision may require programme records, financial information and further questions about how the organisation works.
By the end of this guide, you should know what to assemble for a donor conversation: an explanation of the need and your contribution, evidence of your ability to deliver, and a funding request calculated from the proposed work. A worked reading-programme example shows how the budget becomes an actual request, including what to reconsider if a donor offers less than you need.
Start by checking whether the donor supports the work you intend to do. That determines which evidence is relevant. From there, we will work through the programme account, delivery arrangements and costs, then check that your public materials agree with the request. Each donor's eligibility and due-diligence requirements still need their own review.
Check donor priorities and funding eligibility
Start with the work you intend to do and compare it with the prospective supporter's stated priorities. A funder interested in education may support teacher development but exclude school construction. Another may fund only registered organisations working in a particular region. Agreement on a broad cause leaves these practical questions open.
Read the current funding guidance before adapting your description. Check the people and places covered, the activities supported, the size and duration of grants, the application route and any exclusions. If the information is unclear, use the funder's stated enquiry channel. A past grant to a similar organisation can help you understand its interests, but its current guidance should govern an application.
Bridgespan's guidance on nonprofit funding strategy connects the choice of funding sources to an organisation's work, funder motivations and the capabilities needed to raise that money. For your next request, that means looking beyond a donor's interest in your cause. Consider whether you can deliver the proposed work and meet the funding conditions while staying faithful to your purpose.
Adapt the emphasis to the reader while preserving your organisation's purpose. For an education funder, an employment programme might explain its training component in detail. It should also explain how that training relates to employment and what other support participants receive. Removing those connections to appear eligible can leave a donor with an inaccurate understanding of the programme.
Once the fit is clear, prepare evidence that answers the specific request. A donor considering equipment needs to understand what the equipment enables and how it will be used. A foundation considering a multi-year grant will also need to understand how the organisation will sustain delivery across that period.
What evidence should a nonprofit show prospective donors?
Evidence of a social problem explains why work is needed. Evidence about your organisation explains what it has done in response. Both matter, and they answer different questions.
A national literacy statistic can establish the wider context for a reading programme. The organisation also needs local information to explain why it selected particular schools, what teachers identified and how the programme responds. Its own delivery records then show the contribution it has made. The reader should be able to follow that sequence without assuming that a national problem proves the value of one intervention.
In Candid's guide to communicating programme impact, Tracy Kaufman distinguishes the resources and activities of a programme from its immediate outputs and the changes it seeks to achieve. Applied to a reading programme, teaching sessions are activities; the number delivered and the pupils attending describe delivery and reach; a change in assessed reading ability addresses a different question about learning.
Use this distinction to choose what to say. If your records establish delivery, describe delivery accurately and explain how you intend to assess learning. If you have comparable assessments, describe what they measured, who completed them and when. This gives a supporter more useful information than a broad statement that the programme transformed education.
Your organisation's role also needs attention. Where schools provide classrooms, teachers help select pupils and another partner supplies books, explain those contributions. You can then describe your own expertise precisely: perhaps you recruit and train reading facilitators, develop session materials and review progress with teachers. That account helps the reader understand what they would be supporting through your organisation.
If you include a participant's experience, explain how it relates to the programme evidence and check permission for that use. Ije's guide to non-profit brand storytelling examines how to develop that account without making one person's story stand for everyone's experience. The next question is whether your organisation has the arrangements to deliver what it now proposes.
What documents should you prepare for a donor?
A past result and a future plan have different evidential needs. Your previous work can demonstrate relevant experience. The next programme also depends on the people, time, relationships and resources available for it.
Suppose you plan to increase the number of schools served. Explain how facilitators will be recruited and prepared, who will supervise them, and whether the schools have agreed to the proposed schedule. If those arrangements are still being discussed, describe the stage reached and what must be settled before delivery begins. A plan becomes more informative when the reader can see how it will be carried out.
Prepare a concise organisational description alongside the programme evidence. Include the organisation's purpose, the responsibilities of the people leading the work and relevant delivery experience. Have the financial and governance records requested by the funder ready for the appropriate review. Sensitive documents should go through an agreed channel rather than being attached indiscriminately to every introductory email.
For a concrete example of what an external review can involve, GlobalGiving's document requirements for organisations outside the United States include programme materials, registration and founding documents, financial statements and a current-year budget. Its guidance also asks for descriptions with programme photos. These are GlobalGiving's requirements, not a universal donor checklist, but they show why a persuasive account of the work needs records behind it.
Prepare a short account of one relevant programme that another person could verify. Name when and where it ran, what your organisation did, what the records establish and who can answer further questions. Select a report extract or other supporting material that actually substantiates those statements. Where a photograph helps explain the activity, its caption should identify what is happening and the programme context, with appropriate permission for its use.
What if your nonprofit has no delivery record yet?
If the organisation is new, make that clear. Separate the team's previous experience from work completed under the new organisation's name. A founder's experience delivering a programme elsewhere may be relevant, but it is not the new organisation's delivery record. Explain the proposed pilot, the arrangements already confirmed and what you intend to learn before expanding.
This preparation also reveals what the communications team cannot settle alone. If the proposed schedule exceeds the available teaching time, the programme lead must revise it. If costs are incomplete, finance must resolve them. Better wording follows those decisions.
How to prepare a project budget for a funding proposal
A budget explains the resources needed to deliver what the proposal describes. It lets a supporter examine the scale of the work, how the amount was calculated and which part remains unfunded.
In Candid's guidance on proposal budgets, Tracy Kaufman explains how a complete, understandable budget can demonstrate credibility by showing that the applicant understands the project's requirements. The practical implication is to explain the calculation behind a cost and include resources that the proposed work depends on.
Project budget example: costs, confirmed funding and the amount to request
Consider this illustrative budget for a six-month reading programme in four schools. All amounts are invented to demonstrate the calculation; they are not Nigerian market-rate estimates. Assume that existing school agreements cover classroom use and that the team has included its other proposed cash costs below.
| Proposed expense | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Facilitator fees | 4 facilitators × 6 months × ₦120,000 | ₦2,880,000 |
| Learning materials | 120 pupils × ₦8,000 | ₦960,000 |
| Transport | 24 weeks × ₦40,000 | ₦960,000 |
| Programme coordination | 6 months × ₦100,000 | ₦600,000 |
| Assessment and reporting | 2 rounds × ₦150,000 | ₦300,000 |
| Programme administration | 6 months × ₦50,000 | ₦300,000 |
| Total cash budget | ₦6,000,000 |
Scroll sideways to read the full table.
If confirmed contributions cover ₦1,500,000, the remaining request is ₦4,500,000. Classroom use should be described separately as a non-cash contribution so it is neither overlooked nor subtracted from the cash budget a second time. If the venue agreement changes, revise the plan and budget together.
An actual budget needs current quotations or other defensible cost estimates. Check the funder's treatment of administration, taxes, inflation and contingencies rather than assuming this example is a complete budget for your programme.
The request could now read:
We are seeking ₦4.5 million towards a six-month reading programme for 120 pupils in four schools. The total cash budget is ₦6 million, of which ₦1.5 million is already confirmed. Funding will cover facilitator time, learning materials, transport, coordination, assessment and administration. The schools will provide classroom space. We plan to assess reading at the start and end of the programme and report the results alongside attendance and delivery records.
This paragraph tells the supporter what is proposed, its scale, the funding gap and the intended assessment. It would need the organisation's relevant experience and evidence of local need elsewhere in the request. Those details should come from the actual programme, not from the illustrative budget.
What to do if a donor offers less than you requested
Before settling the amount, consider what happens if the donor offers less than requested. In the example above, a ₦3 million offer would leave ₦1.5 million of the planned cash budget unfunded. The team would need to secure that balance, agree a revised scope or change the timing. It should recalculate the costs of any smaller programme: coordination and administration may not fall in direct proportion to pupil numbers. Give the donor an accurate revised proposal rather than retaining the original delivery promise with an unexplained shortfall.
Once the programme and its costs are agreed, check the materials a supporter will use to understand your organisation. The request should remain intelligible when read alongside them.
Keep your proposal and public nonprofit information consistent
After reading a proposal, a supporter may encounter the organisation through its website, reports or a conversation with a partner. These materials should make the same organisation recognisable. They can differ in detail while agreeing about its purpose, role and results.
Compare the description in your request with the current website and programme summary. Check that figures refer to the same period, and explain when they measure different things. A proposal can legitimately describe plans that are not yet on the website; label them as plans so a reader does not confuse them with completed work.
This is where evidence preparation connects to brand. An organisation may have useful programme knowledge that outsiders cannot find, or several public descriptions that obscure its actual contribution. Ije's non-profit branding strategy guide explains how those decisions should connect across public materials. A discrepancy in a spreadsheet needs a data correction; a persistent mismatch in how the organisation explains itself needs attention to its messages and their use.
For an initial conversation, assemble a short programme summary, the costed request and a small selection of relevant evidence. Keep the fuller records available for follow-up. Assign one contact who can bring in programme or finance colleagues when a question needs their knowledge. This avoids sending a large, unexplained folder and expecting the supporter to reconstruct the proposal.
Ije's Donor Confidence Readiness Check offers a structured self-check of your preparation for that conversation. Use it to identify questions your team still needs to answer; it cannot predict a donor's decision or replace the funder's requirements.
Before sending the request, read it from the supporter's position. Can you identify the intended work, the evidence for it, the organisation's role and the amount being requested without consulting the person who wrote it? Follow up on any answer that depends on unstated knowledge. The result should be a request your team can explain consistently and a prospective supporter can assess on its merits.