• Forward in an extensive long term planning tool for fundraising organizations. Forward calculates your income, investment and active donors into the future and it shows you the profitability of your acquisition investments. It also facilitates the first year monitoring process.

    Next to these practical functions Forward also takes you and your team on a journey to learn and adopt data-driven fundraising. So, valuable and fun!

  • There are many reasons to start using Forward. First of all a few practical ones: Forward facilitates the annual and multi-year budgeting proces. It shows you the profitability of your acquisition program. During the year you will have a stricter budget management and more grip on expected results.

    Working with Forward is also educational. It gives you insight in the investment dynamic behind individual giving and therefor stimulates data-driven fundraising. Boards and Management Teams are easier to convince and for new fundraisers it can be used as an onboarding tool. In general it creates transparency in your fundraising strategy and results.

  • We are all familiar with the Excel-based planning tools. Most of them are too complex (or too simple), not user-friendly, prone to errors, too dependent on linked systems or the people who created them, and they always have a limited lifespan.

    Forward is basically the opposite.

  • We can get your own Forward up and running in a matter of days. Then you will need to do some homework to familiarize yourself with the tool, get to know the numbers you need and start filling out your segments.

    Forward is very patient. Forward does not work miracles. It faciliatates the process and forces you to think about best practice fundraising. The more time you spend with Forward, the more YOU become the miracle.

    It's difficult to say how much time you will spend on the implementation, because it all depends on (1) your current understanding of your own data in general, and grip on the drivers of growth more specifically, (2) how much time you will spend on getting to know Forward, (3) the level of precision of the projections you feel comfortable with, (4) your experience with, and knowledge of long term planning methodology.

    We always like to add the insight that time investment in Forward is actually part of your learning curve, and it will undoubtedly make you a better fundraiser. Therefore the journey of implementation and using Forward is equally important as the end product (your fundraising projections).

  • If you start with Forward, we will (often literally) stand next to you for the initial setup. We will guide you in the process until you know how to do it yourself. We also have an extensive Support Center that can help you when you have questions. We even have an Whatsapp community where you can reach out to other Forward users.

  • No, Forward is a standalone tool. It’s basically a big calculator that you can use to plan and monitor your fundraising. There are a few reasons why we don’t link Forward with other systems.

    First of all, it’s not needed. In most instances we are looking forward in time, so we need to apply a human filter to all the data we input in Forward. This data simply can not come from your database.

    Second, we want to stay away from too much dependency on other systems, which in our years of experience, causes many delays and drives up the price exponentially.

    Third, and this might be the most important one, we want fundraisers to think for themselves. If they actively work with these numbers, they will understand the business case behind individual giving. They will understand the most important elements of long term fundraising success.

  • Forward is the result of a unique collaboration between Reinier Fundraising and XLReporting. Both bring their own expertise to the table.

    Reinier Fundraising has 20+ years international fundraising experience working with many of the largest (I)NGO’s.

    XLReporting is a leading Reporting & Forecasting software solution.

    Together they created this fantastic product.

  • We use a tiered annual subscription model based on the functionality in Forward. So, you only pay for the functionality you want to use.

    Obviously, if used wisely, Forward is tremendous value for money for any organization of any size. All clients have indicated big steps forward in their approach to data-driven fundraising and all investment has already paid off.

    When we give you a demo we can also give you an advice which price plan would be best for your specific organization and situation.

    In Forward you can choose three price plans. Do you want to use the core features needed to start making a difference? Go for Essentials. The mid-level Standard plan is for increasing fundraising efforts. Premium is our top-tier plan for high-impact, strategic fundraising growth. Check out the price plans.

  • Yes, definitely. Use the contact form to send us your questions. We will get back to you as soon as possible!