What is Forward?
Forward is a long-term fundraising planning, profitability and monitoring tool that helps organisations understand where their current choices are taking them, compare alternative scenarios and make better long-term investment decisions.
It brings fundraising ambition, assumptions, investment and performance together in one five-year model.
One integrated way of working
Forward brings Long-Term Planning, Profitability and Monitoring together in one fundraising model.
Long-Term Planning helps you understand where your current course is taking you and what needs to change to reach your ambition.
Profitability shows what those choices mean for investment, net income, ROI and LTV over time.
Monitoring helps you track whether performance is developing as expected and where your fundraising is now heading.
Together, these three parts connect planning, investment and performance in one continuous process.
Make the future visible
Forward starts with a five-year baseline based on your current fundraising portfolio, performance and assumptions.
This shows where your present course is likely to take donor numbers, income, investment and profitability over time.
You can then compare that trajectory with your ambition and test different routes to growth to understand what needs to change.
That may involve more or better acquisition, stronger retention, higher gift value, diversification or additional investment.
Forward helps you see the long-term consequences of those choices before you make them.
Explore Long-Term Planning →
Understand what creates value
Forward looks beyond income alone.
It brings together donor numbers, gross income, investment, net income, ROI and LTV, so you can understand how different fundraising choices create value over time.
This helps you compare activities, donor segments and scenarios more effectively. A higher acquisition cost may still make sense if donor quality, retention and long-term value are stronger. Likewise, a high short-term ROI does not automatically mean an activity is the best place to invest.
Forward helps you understand the full economics behind fundraising growth and make better investment decisions.
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Keep plans on course
Long-term planning does not stop once the plan is finished. The first year of your five-year plan becomes the detailed annual plan you monitor throughout the year, keeping short-term performance connected to your longer-term direction.
Forward helps you compare actual performance with your plan, update your forecast and understand where fundraising is now heading.
By combining actuals with the latest forecast, you create an updated view of expected year-end performance. Forward calls this the Latest Estimate.
It also helps you understand what is driving the change. Are you recruiting fewer donors than expected? Is retention stronger? Are gift values changing? Is investment higher or lower than planned?
That makes it easier to learn from performance, update assumptions and adjust plans and investment decisions when needed.
Explore Monitoring →
Work with the drivers behind your results
Fundraising results are shaped by a combination of different drivers.
Forward helps you bring those drivers together and understand how changes in one area affect the rest of your fundraising programme.
Depending on your fundraising mix, these drivers can include acquisition volume and quality, gift value, retention, donor development, diversification of channels, propositions and income sources, and investment.
By making these assumptions visible, Forward helps you understand what is driving growth, where the risks are and which areas have the greatest potential to improve future performance.
Make your assumptions explicit
Every long-term fundraising plan is built on assumptions.
How many donors can you recruit? At what cost? What will they give, and how will that develop over time? How long will they stay? How much can retention improve? What happens if investment changes?
Forward brings these assumptions together in one model, so they can be reviewed, discussed and challenged.
That makes it easier to see which assumptions matter most, where uncertainty is highest and what needs to be monitored closely over time.
Working with these assumptions also helps fundraisers better understand the investment dynamics behind individual giving and how acquisition, retention, gift value and investment interact over time.
The value of Forward is therefore not only in the numbers it produces, but also in making the thinking behind the plan visible.
Why Forward is standalone
Forward is deliberately standalone and does not depend on a direct connection with your CRM.
You enter the key aggregated data and assumptions needed for planning and monitoring. This keeps Forward independent of different CRM and reporting environments and, importantly, keeps the assumptions behind the plan visible.
Future fundraising cannot simply be derived from historical CRM data. Decisions about acquisition, retention, gift value, investment, diversification and growth still require judgement.
Working with those assumptions directly helps fundraising teams stay close to the economics of their programme and makes it easier to spot weak data, unrealistic expectations or areas that need more attention.
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.”
