How A Year of Research and Repositioning Led Fundraising University to Partner With Franchise FastLane

When Fundraising University president Mike Bahun first met Ryan Zink and the Franchise FastLane team in 2018, the two Omaha, Nebraska-based companies saw the value in one another, but it wasn’t the right time to join forces.

A former three-sport athlete who played baseball at the collegiate and professional level, Bahun was working as a coach at the high school level when he was approached by a business that handled fundraising from an outside operation. Bahun was intrigued and began working for the company part-time, then full-time for seven years before taking over the company that would become Fundraising University 10 years ago.

Now, Fundraising University operates in Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Georgia, working with high school and youth organizations to a system through which to run one-week fundraisers designed to raise $250 per athlete in that span.

“As we continued to expand the business and add representatives in a growing number of areas, we were constantly in the process of building better systems to service more customers, so it made a lot of sense to explore different ways to scale it,” Bahun said. “Being from Omaha, it was hard to ignore Franchise FastLane and what they were making happen with other brands like us.”

Bahun found Franchise FastLane’s broker network connections compelling and felt Fundraising University’s non-brick-and-mortar model aligned nicely with the investment range of a typical Franchise FastLane partner brand. Plus, Bahun said, he felt aligned with Franchise FastLane’s ideal partner brand due to an alignment of core values—Fundraising University and Franchise FastLane are both intentional about furthering youth fitness initiatives, as evidenced through the franchise growth company’s work with D1 Training.

“Sports are underfunded, yet at an all-time high for participation. I felt we had the same mindset: we want to give opportunities to kids, coaches and their communities and coaches,” Bahun said.

Before long, the two parties connected and had a great conversation, but left without an established partnership in place. Why?

“Based on their model and expectations, I knew we needed to take some time to make sure our ducks were in a row,” Bahun said. “So, we worked backward, building all training, support mechanisms and other processes necessary to scale over a 12-month period. We brought in franchising experts with decades of experience and took our systems, policies and training to a place where we felt we could support 200 units, then modeled a test of that and walked FastLane through it to show them how we’d improved.”

Needless to say, the team was impressed and a partnership was forged. The lesson on franchising and when is the right time to do so, though, is something Bahun anticipates having a lasting effect on the health of the Fundraising University franchise system.

“Most people have a strong emotional concept where passion drives their desire to scale,” Bahun said. “Then they get into franchising and start unpacking the industry and learning as they go, but there’s still the same year-plus of hard lessons and internal growth necessary for it to work. We sat back and let the space sort itself out, and saw a few national companies dissolve in the process—waiting intentionally for the right time to franchise was a big part of it. Now, we’re in an excellent position to begin working with Franchise FastLane and scale efficiently and effectively.”

After putting in the work, Fundraising University is well equipped to support the kind of growth Franchise FastLane has built its reputation on delivering. Bahun’s goals for growth are 35 franchises within a year’s time and 125 agreements in three years’ time.