What is Forward?
Forward is fundraising planning software that helps you explore where today’s performance and investment choices could take you over five years — and what could change that outlook.
Build scenarios, compare their financial consequences and monitor your annual performance, so your team can make informed decisions about sustainable growth for your mission.
Make the future visible
Start with your existing fundraising portfolio and assumptions about acquisition, retention, donor value and investment. Build a five-year outlook and compare it with your ambition.
Then explore alternative scenarios. Test individual changes or combinations of choices to understand what they could deliver and what investment they would require.
Explore Long-Term Planning →
Understand what creates value
Assess growth through both income and the investment required to generate it. Compare scenarios and donor segments on net income, return on investment, donor lifetime value and payback periods.
These measures help you weigh different opportunities. Higher acquisition costs may be justified by stronger retention and donor value, while a high short-term return may offer limited room for future growth.
Explore Profitability →
Connect your annual plan with your long-term ambition
The first year of your five-year plan becomes the annual plan you monitor throughout the year.
Compare monthly actuals with your plan and combine results to date with your forecast for the remaining months. Your Latest Estimate shows your expected year-end results.
Review the drivers behind any differences, decide where to adjust and use what you learn to revisit your long-term assumptions.
Explore Monitoring →
Make the thinking behind your plan visible
How many donors will you recruit, at what cost? What will they give? How long will they stay, and how might their giving develop?
Forward brings these assumptions together, so your team can review, discuss and challenge them. Testing different assumptions reveals how acquisition, retention, donor value and costs interact over time.
The process also highlights gaps in your knowledge and data. Teams learn which assumptions need further investigation and which drivers deserve closer attention during the year.
Why Forward is standalone
Forward works independently of your CRM. You enter aggregated figures and planning assumptions; individual donor records are not required.
Your CRM and reporting tools provide the evidence. Your team adds its expectations about future performance, activities and investment.
This makes the assumptions behind your plan explicit and keeps them open to discussion as your understanding develops.
Built by fundraisers, for fundraisers
Forward combines fundraising expertise with strong financial modelling and reporting.
It was developed by Reinier Fundraising and XLReporting to help fundraising teams make better long-term decisions about growth, investment and performance.
That combination matters. Forward is not generic planning software adapted to fundraising afterwards. It is built around the way fundraising actually works: donor acquisition, retention, gift value, investment, profitability and long-term donor development.
The result is a tool designed for the questions fundraising leaders, Finance teams and Boards need to answer together.
See where your fundraising is heading
Forward helps you connect long-term ambition, investment, profitability and performance.
Build a clearer view of the future, test the choices that can get you there and keep adjusting as reality changes.
Compare Forward price plans →
“What I like most is that it forces you to be transparent, discuss and learn.”
