As we approach mid-August, you might think itโs too early to consider year-end fundraising, but now is a great time to start building a plan so you arenโt rushed as the calendar continues to turn. Getting ahead of it and planning carefully will pay off as you start to feel year-end pressure.
Start evaluating your year-end fundraising from previous years. What worked, and what can you do differently? Using Fundraise with Impactโs six-point year-end audit, you can position your organization well for year-end fundraising success. More importantly, you can serve donors well by honoring who they are, why they give, and how they want to be involved.
1. Are you personalizing your outreach?
Iโll admitโIโm one of the odd people who opens every piece of mail from a nonprofit. Mostly, Iโll read and consider each one, tooโunless the organization writes, โDear Friendโ or something equally impersonal.
Itโs somewhere between outright careless and spray-and-pray.
To build great campaigns, you should know your donorsโby name, at least. And you should be using their names. Technologically speaking, there is no reason to ignore it. Ensure donor records are up-to-date in your CRM and every communication can be personalized.
Is your CRM letting you down? Learn why you should change your CRM now.
2. Are you thanking your donors enough?
Iโm a huge proponent of making a phone call to thank every new donor and every donor over a certain dollar amount. (Only you can determine if that is $100 or $1,000, based on your organization.)
Taking that further, I recommend that a new donor be placed in an automated introduction series for four to 10 weeks. This series should be full of thank-you notes from various team members and board members and showcase stories of your organizationโs successes.
Even if you havenโt implemented something like this, there is still time. Call and thank donors who gave for the first time this year. You could even say something like, โI know youโve already given this year, but I hope we can send you some additional mail in the next few months. Youโll see how your gifts have already made an impactโand how weโre asking others to join you. Is that OK with you?โ
Two things happen here: youโre getting their permission to solicit them, and theyโll pay attention to your mail. Permission and attention are two important ingredients for building a long-term partnership.
3. Are you varying your modes of outreach?
I wonโt get into all the possible tips and tricks of segmentation here, but I will say that people will start to ignore you if youโre doing two things: repeatedly using the same message in communications and/or relying on one method of outreach.
You need to get creative to stand out from the noise. Are you sending handwritten notes to specific groups of donors? Are you re-forwarding stories or emails from your marketing team, letting donors know youโre thinking about them? Are you using leverage points (e.g., shared interests) to gather donors in special ways?
All these things workโyou just have to know when to implement each.
4. Are you asking for a recurring gift?
Iโve seen an increasing number of people willing to sign up for recurring giving. In an uncertain economy, itโs less comfortable for people to give a large philanthropic gift at one time, so it is wise to ask them to do it over a longer period of time.
At my organization, some supporters give as much as $3,000 per month after responding to a regular recurring giving sign-up invitation.
You donโt always know what works best for donors, so give them suggestions and options.
5. Are you live-signing acknowledgment letters and other communication?
This one is my favorite. I get a stack of acknowledgment letters to sign in my inbox (as does our CEO and director of philanthropy). Between us, we see just about every gift made to our organization. We put genuine ink on paper, sign our names, and write personal notes.
Iโm always surprised at how many names I recognize and how many of the people I personally know. Itโs a wonderful opportunity to write to them about how special their gift is to usโand me.
It also signals that thanking donors is important to us. Just like the donor taking personal time to send a gift, we should mirror that and take personal time to recognize its importance.
6. Are you using your best fundraising partners to enhance your year-end campaigns and long-term relationship building?
Take a minute to consider your best fundraising partners. Is it your CEO? Board Chair? Program expert? Another donor?
Have you enlisted your best partners to help you with year-end fundraising efforts? If you have, youโre getting big leverage on your time and outreach efforts. Consider what it means for a donor to get a note from the CEO.
One of my best friends is president of a large school system in Californiaโheโs incredible with donors. However, as the leader of the entire system, he often doesnโt have time to strategize and plan, much less know each donor.
A strong development partner and plan would put the right donors in front of him at the right timeโand then watch him hit it out of the park. This is what development pros need to be for their leaders, especially as year-end preparations are underway.
Next Steps
- Bring these topics to a team meetingโask what your organization is already doing well and celebrate it!
- What about areas where your org is not doing well? Ask the team what makes sense. Can you adopt all six tactics at once? Or do you need to take small steps to implement these changes?
- Focus on doing right by the donor. Donors rarely look for perfectionโthey look for care, relationships, belonging, and a true partnership. Donโt let the perfect plan be the enemy of the donor-focused plan.
