Is It A Crisis? No, It’s A Year-end Appeal

January 6, 2015      Admin

As we were cleaning off our desks, emptying our ‘In’ and ‘Out’ baskets and generally tidying up Agitator Global Headquarters in preparation for 2015, we couldn’t help but notice the increasing frequency of inbound chimes in our mailbox.

“Only 29 hours to go …”

“ You have less than a day to get a 3 for 1 match for your year-end gift …”

“We haven’t heard from you and time is running out …”

urgentJust about every sort of urgent, countdown plea imaginable.

This flurry of desperate organization-focused missives reminded us of the notorious last-minute pleas by televangelist Oral Roberts. In 1987 he warned his followers that if a goal of $8 million wasn’t met by month’s end, God “would call him home.”

So, it was with relief that this electronic flood of desperation was interrupted with an email from Ken Smith, a long-time friend, former colleague, donor and loyal Agitator reader.

Ken attached an email he’d just received from, the COO of a group to which he contributes …

“Kenneth—

 “I’m out of the office tomorrow, so I asked our team for one last update before leaving.

“With one day left before [ our ] year-end deadline, we still need to raise $43,000.

“I’ll be blunt. We can’t get there without you. You’ve been so generous in your support. Can you make one more donation of $50 or more and ensure that we can do more …. in 2015?

“Click here to make a tax-deductible donation of $50 or more immediately.

“Your support makes it possible for us to protect …….”

“Thank you,

[Name removed by the Editors]

Chief Operating Officer

[ Organization name removed by the Editors]

“Unsubscribe from receiving email, or change your email preferences.”

Accompanying that plea was Ken’s response back to the organization. A response that most likely occurred to lots of other donors who received the same message:

“Ms. XXXX

“Wow, with that sort of shortfall — $43,000 — facing you on the last day of the year, I can’t understand why you would be out of the office tomorrow. Seems to me that you’d be burning the midnight oil and pushing hard all day the 31st to make budget rather than scoot off for an early New Year’s Eve. Maybe if you stuck around and made a few personal phone calls early in the day you could get out by noon or so.

“Your faithful supporter,

“Ken Smith”

Any suggestions for a New Year’s Resolution?

Roger and Tom

P.S. Even if you got a bit carried away with the year-end email blasts you can make up some lost ground with your donors.

Here’s an example of a prompt, timely, and inspiring year-end thank you sent by NRDC to its donors and activists the first business day of the new year.

3 responses to “Is It A Crisis? No, It’s A Year-end Appeal”

  1. Adrian Salmon says:
    January 6, 2015 at 4:10 am

    I hate year-end appeals. Utterly hate them.Yes, I get that in the US the end of tax year is a huge thing, and I get that this drives the biggest online giving period of the year. But it still doesn’t stop me wincing as each formulaic appeal email, that has absolutely nothing to do with any reason why I might give, lands in my inbox. Some so evidently cobbled together at the last minute that I’m often addressed as Dear @FirstName@ or Dear Mr @Sample@. If I were just an ‘ordinary’ donor, I could delete them with impunity. But as a donor and a fundraiser, I feel duty-bound to read the blasted things. Thank goodness it’s all over now for another 11 months or so.

  2. Steve MacLaughlin says:
    January 6, 2015 at 9:21 am

    I’ve been collecting all the end-of-year emails that I get for the past 4 years now. It’s become somewhat of a New Year’s Day tradition to sit down and sift through the muck…err…messages.

    This year I received about 445 emails from 74 different nonprofits. Yes, there are certainly plenty of examples of artificial crisis and “Dear Friend” messages that end up in the electronic circular file for most people. But there are also some really well done campaigns done across several weeks by organizations that other nonprofits can learn a lot from.

    Only 2% of fundraising email subject lines promoted a tax deduction and I continue to see that decreasing each year. It’s also very clear that #GivingTuesday is causing a shift in when digital appeals are happening. Worth noting that The Nature Conservancy was the only nonprofit to use a text message on December 31st to ask for a donation. Nice pivot to avoid the inbox when everyone else was piling on.

    There was one nonprofit that sent me 23 fundraising emails in December. I would like to think that I’m in some special test segment. What was more surprising is that 16 nonprofits sent me one email for the entire month — and that was it. 23 is too many but just one is certainly not enough.

    You can learn more about all 445 email subject lines here: http://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/400-more-email-subject-lines-from-end-of-year-fundraising/

  3. Harry Lynch says:
    January 6, 2015 at 10:24 am

    I’m sure that more than a few of us in the business of creating so many of those urgent year-end appeals — and those of us in the business are most likely to be recipients like Steve as well as senders — can’t help but wonder in our guts:

    When is enough enough?!?

    But as Steve notes there were many really well done campaigns executed strategically and carefully spanning weeks. Many were driven by data and by results and by mind-blowing creativity. Many were quite successful and some of them spectacularly so.

    In our guts it can “feel” like too much. But if we’re really paying attention to the data, we’ll know when it really *is* too much.

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