How to Run a Sprint to Improve Your Marketing & Fundraising Efforts

The Sprint Framework

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days is a book written by Jake Knapp and his team that gives nonprofits and other organizations strategies and a streamlined process for how to ultimately function more effectively as a team. His book also comes with resources on the web that will teach you how to run a successful design sprint. The framework that Knapp sets up in his book can be applied to key challenges in the workplace and help improve your marketing and fundraising efforts in a fraction of the time that your classic processes may take.

Putting the Framework into Action

At Community Boost, the sprint framework has become very beneficial to our marketing and fundraising campaign. For example, we realized we needed to improve upon our low recurring revenue, and the best way to do this was by increasing recurring donor offers. We used Knapp’s sprint framework and got to work on finding ways to solve our problem. We sketched out possible solutions, mapped out a storyboard, and then we prototyped and received actual donor supporter feedback. This experience made us feel more prepared to go to market effectively, and with this process, we solved upwards of 80% of future messaging problems.

How the Framework Can Help You

Nonprofit organizations are used to focusing their marketing and fundraising efforts on the campaign creative, the fundraising copy, and the floods of ideas coming from the board. It becomes a struggle to make effective decisions without a streamlined process in place. The sprint framework provides value and allows your team to collaborate and think through ideas. It can ultimately be the game-changer in increasing your organization’s revenue, and it is sure to improve your marketing and fundraising efforts for the long term.

Cameron Ripley