How To Year-End Fundraise

Here’s How To Effectively Year-End Fundraise:

Start planning your year-end fundraising campaign early.

 Create a fundraising and communications calendar with key dates for each year-end touch point.

Map out your overall fundraising strategy to help you keep an eye on the big picture, as well as the steps involved in each part of your development activities.

Evaluate your fundraising data.

Take actions based on extensive donor analytics.

Know who your donors are, their propensity and capacity to give, and their specific interests.

Use data to inform the strategic decisions of your campaign.

Enlist the support of the Chair of the Board in leading your year-end campaign.

Engage your Development Committee of the Board fully in the process.

Identify all of your Board members and their past year-end giving.

Determine with the Chair and Development Committee members what each member's capacity may be and how much you can reasonably ask them for based upon their giving throughout the year.

Develop a plan for soliciting each Board member individually for the specific desired ask amount.

These solicitations must be done on a "peer-to-peer" basis where a Board member, preferably your Chair or a Development Committee member, solicits each Board member.

Draft a solicitation letter that the Board chair send out to pre-solicit Board members.

Make sure that this pre-solicitation/call letter is followed up by an actual in-person solicitation by face-to-face meeting or telephone.

Board solicitations must be conducted before the actual mass public solicitations begin so that you can demonstrate to the public that you have the full commitment of your Board. .

Continue to conduct follow-up solicitations with all Board members until all gifts are made. These follow-ups must be personal---either through meetings or telephone calls, led by your Board Chair and a Development Committee member or two.

At each board meeting, report the success of Board member giving against a goal of 100% board giving.

Use email reminders and updates.

Celebrate 100% giving once attained and make a big deal of it.

Make sure your Board members are among the top donors to your organization.

Break down development silos.

Be certain every board member, staffer and volunteer involved in your year-end fundraising works harmoniously in concert together.

Encourage them to build upon each other’s messaging and actively drive donor engagement and involvement with your organization.

Craft a story that gets donors to give.

Create a letter that captures donors hearts — and their support.

Use many approaches within an integrated campaign.

Include mass direct mail, email, telemarketing, publicity and social media in addition to face-to-face major gift asks.

Craft an emotional story — and theme — that speaks to your donors.

Use an integrated campaign, one that includes direct mail, your website, and email.

Develop a strategic year-end fundraising plan that empowers your organization to not only meet its goals, but crush them.

Put together a multichannel campaign.

Leave no stone unturned in your quest to make this your best ever year-end fundraising campaign!

Write a compelling letter with storytelling that will capture any donor’s heart and support.

Utilize a story that strongly resonates with your donors.

Strategically incorporate face-to-face asks.

Develop new monthly donors during #GivingTuesday.

Make sure your appeal is tied to a person, animal, or place in need of assistance.

Use words and images that appeal to donors emotionally.

Provide specific examples of how their gifts shall benefit others.

In order to move your donors into deeper commitments and higher levels of giving, have several cultivation events.

Secure matching challenges so your donors’ gifts go twice as far.

Launch giving societies---donor clubs that donors can join at various levels

Provide opportunities for your donors to give to specific programs or projects.

Optimize your website.

Have your year-end campaign properly designed and organized.

Collect email addresses.

Have people register for ongoing communications and updates.

Have a great giving clubs that donors can join at various levels system for capturing donations.

Integrate your communication channels.

Make sure all your communication channels are linked, timed, and orchestrated according to each one’s particular strength.

Use planned communications that alternate between email and direct mail.

Call all your donors.

Use in-person visits for key constituents.

Use an integrated approach to reinforce your message and give donors multiple outlets through which to give.

Plan a final email push during the last few days of the year.

Wrap up your year-end communications after the holidays with an email push that offers donors a last chance to give.

Consider sending the first of your final emails to your entire donor file, minus those that have already given.

For your next send, suppress the names of those who opened the previous last-chance email and resend the email again.

Thank your donors.

Use each donation as an opportunity to creatively express appreciation and gratitude.

Be sure the messaging and design of any thank you is consistent with your campaign. Reularly Regularly thank donors throughout the year, not merely at year-end.

Use a personal phone call, a handwritten note, or a letter to let your donors know how important they are to your work and how grateful you are for their support.

Cultivate for next year.

Plan for strategic follow-up throughout the first quarter to establish and foster ongoing relationships with donors.

After your thank-you emails, schedule a series of welcome emails with more information about your work and your plans for the upcoming year.

Train fundraising ambassadors to enhance your year-end success.

Include your colleagues, staff, board members, volunteers, and loyal donors.

Share with them a clear call to action.

Offer fundraising training that makes it easy for them to raise the most money possible.

Indoctrinate them regarding your organization’s impact.

Use donor management software to identify loyal donors most likely to be supportive.

Discover and remove the greatest barriers to effective year-end fundraising.

 Encourage fundraising ambassadors to share their passions with their asks.

Motivate them to practice, practice, practice (and practice) more.

Take a donor-centered approach.

Be empathetic and walk in your donor’s shoes.

Make an online donation to your own charity.

Do the same through the mail.

Then immediately correct anything that didn’t go as you would have expected.

Take steps to improve donor retention.

Print your lists of LYBUNTS and SYBUNTS— those who gave “Last Year But Not This” and “Some Years But Not This” and do what you can to ensure those donors give again this year.

Secure major gifts in your year-end campaign by reaching out now to your top donors this year and asking them for a major gift.

Communicate with each of your largest and best donors about what you need and how they can help before year-end.

Personalize, personalize, personalize your appeals.

Write personal notes to each donor you are asking for a gift. Handwrite their envelopes as well.

Send a follow up letter or make a follow up phone call to those who don’t respond.

Practice gratitude.

Show appreciation for the gifts you have received and those that are coming your way.

Print lists of your most loyal donors (those who have steadily given over the last few years), as well as your monthly donors, your largest donors, and your first-time donors.

Give them a phone call simply to say thank you.

Let donors know how much their gifts have meant to your organization and know how their money was used.

Let donors know the impact their gifts have had on the people you serve.

Be patient, persevering and persistent. Craft a compelling appeal letter and creatively design its reply envelope.

Include stories, compelling quotes, and some amazing statistics in each appeal.

Set aside a day for volunteers and staff members to personalize letters well in advance of your mail date. Increase your social media outreach.

Do publicity on what you accomplished this year.

Ask all your board members to consider making additional, personal year-end gifts.

Make sure you have 100% board giving participation and that each of your board members have given.

Invite each of your volunteers to ask their friends and family for donations in their name instead of giving holiday gifts this year.

Hire a fundraising expert to advise, guide and inspire you.

P.S. Anything else that YOU would add?

The author, Dr. John B. Charnay, CEO of Charnay and Associates in Greater Los Angeles, is a top nonprofit fundraising expert and advisor who has raised over a quarter of a billion dollars during his distinguished career. He has been in charge of numerous major fundraising special events. He often strategically advises board chairs and facilitates board fundraising retreats and has trained numerous boards and development directors and their staffs in fundraising. He has extensive experience teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels at leading universities throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including USC, UCLA, CSUN, FIDM, Woodbury and Pepperdine. Additionally, he is an award-winning public relations professional. He has been a strategic PR advisor to many famous celebrities and Fortune 1000 CEOs. Additionally, he serves as a trusted strategic philanthropic advisor to numerous high net worth individuals & families & family offices. To meet him and ask for his support, invite him to be LinkedIn (email in profile) and contact him today!