Succeed In Year-End Fundraising

Year-end fundraising season is here. It arrived sooner than you expected---this year just as it has in all prior years. It is vital and essential to the success of your nonprofit’s fundraising program. Can you believe there are now less than 60 days until the end of 2019!

Is your nonprofit doing all that it can to harness the tremendous power of last-minute year-end fundraising?

Nearly a third of all annual donations are made in December. Some charities raise over ten percent of their annual revenue in the last three days of December alone.

Many charities raise a nearly half of their annual revenue just in the year’s final three months of October/November/December.

So be sure to show your best donors some extra love now at year-end.

Be sure you have been consistently building your email list using your website and social media platforms.

Be sure to develop and have both a strategic plan and a development plan in place.

Many organizations, in fact, are raising nearly 70% of their donations during the last six weeks of the year. And, generally, approximately one full third (33 percent) of charitable donations made in December happen on the last day of the month---the 31st!

If your so-called plan for year-end fundraising is merely to send out one written appeal to your donor database and just cross your fingers and hold your breath, you’re likely leaving money on the table! Quite a bit of money, in fact.

Here are a few tips to help you achieve greater year-end fundraising success:

Determine what you’re trying to achieve.

Determine how you’re going to reach your goals

Tell a great story in a compelling manner.

Organize a face-to-face major gift campaign parallel to your direct mail & email annual appeals.

Determine which communications channels you’ll use.

Decide what resources you need to get the job done.

Decide who will execute your campaign steps.

Define how you will measure your success in quantifiable results.

Set your timeline and benchmarks. Include the warm up activities, the ask dates & your followup dates.

Set yourself apart.

Segment and test.

Monitor and tweak.

Issue some emails that aren’t asking for a donation, to balance out your asks.

Utilize thank you emails, notes and thank you letters, newsletters, and success stories to keep your constituents engaged.   

Say thanks first.

Have a November board thank-a-thon. They’ll come if you feed them supper!

Let your donors know how much you appreciate them, and tell them how their gifts were used.

Ask them why they are giving and why they believe in your organization. Start a conversation!

Harness pre-campaign communications to warm up, unveil, update, create excitement – and don’t ask yet.

Reach out to your donors with postcards or emails — or even call them — to let them know your annual appeal effort is about to roll out.

Generate some excitement!

Tell stories about the people you’re helping.

Share the goal.

Share what all your work will accomplish.

Get the donors & prospects emotionally involved.

Express gratitude & appreciation for prior giving to provide the foundation for a successful campaign with existing donors.

Send multiple, repeated appeals and communications.

Create a multi-channel approach that has a series of communications to your donors.

Engage your donors over and over again.

Create a unique theme with a specific visual feel, a heartfelt message and a dollar goal.

Utilize color or an image that is unusual or different in order to get attention.

Send lots of different communications echoing the theme over and over all autumn.

Deploy various different communications approaches – email, mail, postcards, phone, social media – all containing the same overall design & feel, messaging and goal.

Send holiday cards containing giving envelopes.

When you write to your donors, tell them: what, exactly, you want to achieve this coming year; how much money it will take to accomplish that; & what you plan to do with their money.

For specific projects, give specific amounts.

Always include a specific ask.

Craft an excellent compelling and persuasive year-end direct mail appeal that gets results through compelling storytelling.

Raise more money online at the end of the year, including on your website, through using both e-mail and direct mail plus through harnessing social media crowdfunding.

Be sure to target high-end donors for last minute giving

Use both year-end email and direct mail appeals.

Leverage Giving Tuesday as well.

Hire a nonprofit fundraising expert to advise guide & 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 strategic 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!