What happens after you submit

Once you press submit, your part is done for now and we take it from there. The wait is a good time to line up the people who'll need to see the report.

Scoring against the method

Your answers and documents are scored against our method. It has eight Forces, and each Force is made of five sub-dimensions, so you'll get forty scores in all.

Each Force is scored from -100 to +100. A Force score is the sum of its five parts. Your overall score is the average of the eight Forces, with nothing added or taken away afterwards.

An AI model reads your evidence against the method's scoring rules and drafts the scores and the report text. The sums are done in code, never by the model, so the arithmetic is exact and the same for every organisation.

Where evidence is thin, a score is capped at plus or minus 10. Positive scores need the documents and practices they describe to exist. You'll see both of these rules at work in your report.

An expert reads every report

Before your report is released, an expert from Fundraiser In The Room reads it in full. They check that the findings follow from your evidence and that the report reads clearly, and they correct anything that doesn't.

When it arrives

We aim to release your report within ten working days of your submitting it. We'll email you when it's ready, at the address you used to buy. The email tells you how to sign in and read it.

If you haven't heard from us after ten working days, write to hello@fundraisingsystemaudit.com.

What to do while you wait

The most useful thing you can do now is book time with the people who'll need to hear about the report. If next year's budget is being set soon, try to get these conversations in before the numbers are agreed. Findings are much easier to act on before then than after.

Book a reading hour. Put an hour in the diary with your chief executive and your finance director, about a week after the report is due. You'll want to read it alone first, and Guide 5 suggests how. Getting the meeting in now saves weeks of chasing later, because diaries fill up and a report only one person has read rarely goes any further.

Tell them what's coming. A short note helps. Something like: "I've completed a Self Audit of our fundraising system. The report will score how well the way we work supports fundraising, across eight areas. I'd like an hour with you both to go through it."

Look at the board calendar. If you think the board should see the findings, check when the next papers are due. Guide 7 has an outline for a one-page cover paper.

Pencil in a team conversation. Guide 8 suggests a 60-minute conversation with your team in the first month. It's easier to find the time now than later.

Read the reading guide. Guide 5 explains how the report is laid out. Ten minutes with it now means you'll spend less time working out the format when your report arrives.

If something changes

If someone you named in an answer leaves, or a document you sent is replaced, you don't need to tell us. The report describes the system as you saw it on the day you submitted. You can talk through what has changed when you discuss it with colleagues.

Your next step

Send a meeting request to your chief executive and finance director today, for an hour about two to three weeks from now.