As the year draws to a close, you are right in the middle of one of the busiest fundraising seasons of the year. It’s a time to double down on your strategy and make sure you have all the details covered. We’ve put together a quick resource roundup to help you in the various end-of-year areas.
Campaign Strategy
Do you have an end-of-year strategy? How do you want to close out the year? There is still time to optimize your outreach strategy and plan for the new year.
Pro Tips:
- Use segmentation: Track which channels donors respond to so that you can utilize that information when reaching out to them for better engagement.
- Use unique links: Create custom links to your giving page to track which efforts resulted in donations.
Resources for Success:
- How Do I Plan My Campaigns Before Building Them in Virtuous?
- How Do I Run Segmentation in Virtuous?
- How Do I Customize URLs to Track and Set Giving Details? (RaiseDonors)
- Use Custom URLs to Set Gift Codes and Values (Virtuous Giving)
- Virtuous Support Articles
- Virtuous Instructor-Led Training
- Donor Segmentation Best Practices
Build Compelling Emails
Email is a crucial part of an end-of-year campaign.
Pro Tips:
- Use Email Lists and Queries: Use lists for subscription-based communications and queries for targeted audiences (e.g., major donors or nondonors).
- Safe Email Sending: Follow email best practices to ensure your messages land in inboxes and you don’t hit your spam threshold.
Resources for Success:
- Email Spam Threshold and Good Sending Practices
- Query support pages
- How Do I Manage Email Lists?
- Virtuous Support Articles
- Virtuous Instructor-Led Training
Optimize Payment Processors and Giving Forms
You will miss out on donations if your giving forms and payment processors are not optimized. Check your limits on transactions with your payment processors. If you’re anticipating higher amounts (congrats!), then reach out to the processor and get it adjusted ahead of time.
Take a hard look at your giving forms. Are they easy to navigate? Do you have a gift ask array or suggested giving amounts? Is there a box to check to make it a recurring donation? Make giving easy.
Pro Tips:
- Test Your Giving Forms: Have a trusted colleague or friend look at your giving forms critically. Fix anything that doesn’t work.
- Be a Secret Donor on Your Own Form: See what causes you friction or might be too cumbersome and prevents your donors from giving.
Resources for Success:
Get the Numbers You Need
Make sure you’re comfortable pulling queries and reports, and unlock deeper insights so you can measure how your end-of-year campaign did.
Pro Tips:
- Query Power: While this helps view reports, the Query tool also powers Receipting, Segmentation, and Automation by defining your audiences (e.g., who your major donors are) so they can be paired with a specific set of actions (e.g., if this is a major donor, they should receive a special statement signed by our CEO).
- Nested Queries: Build powerful insights, like who abandoned your giving page after clicking your email’s CTA.
Resources for Success:
- Virtuous Academy: Reporting and Insights
- Virtuous Help Center: Queries and Reports
- Webinar: Boosting Year-End Fundraising with Data and Multichannel Campaigns
Receipts
This is a crucial step in the donation process and one that is necessary for nonprofits and donors. This is a chance for you to once again recognize your donors’ generosity and be timely in helping them prepare for tax season.
Pro Tips:
- Work Smarter: Create different templates for one-time receipts and annual statements.
- Empower Donors: If you have Virtuous Giving or RaiseDonors, you can allow donors to see their statements in their Donor Portal.
Resources for Success:
- Gift processing Virtuous Academy course
- Virtuous support articles on receipting
- One-on-one training sessions
This year-end giving season is your opportunity to make a meaningful impact and start 2025 strong. With these tools and resources, you can effectively execute and evaluate your campaigns and feel confident going into the new year.
The Virtuous Help Center offers workshops, webinars, and expert guidance to maximize your success.
If you’re not using Virtuous, schedule a demo today to see how it can transform your nonprofit.
