As a kid I raptly listened as my parents and grandparents read my brother and me ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” every year until I went away to college and discovered there may not be a Santa Claus.

I did the same thing to my kids.  Each year I uttered “Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Dunder Blixem.” Not to mention “Ma in her kerchief” and “settling down for a long winter’s nap…while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.”

What I never understood –and didn’t bother asking — is just what the hell is a “sugar plum”?

Turns out I’m not alone.  A quick poll of the last five people I talked to on Wednesday found everyone pretty much unknowing or unsure about sugar plums.

A tireless hunt by our Global Research Department on behalf Agitator readers, reveals what they’re not. They ain’t sugar-coated plums.

What they seem to be are small balls of confectionary goodness packed with honey, sugar, figs, apricots and, yes dried plums.  Here’s a recipe for ’em.

All of which is by way of introducing a fundraiser’s version  of  The Night Before Christmas written a year ago to this day by Nick Ellinger for the DonorVoice blog.

No sugar plums, but some sweet behavioral science.

Roger

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Twas the night before Christmas and all through HQ
Only one direct marketer made her review
Of whether her plan had enough donor cares
To get gifts from poor up to the millionaires.

Her ED was nestled all snug in her bed
While visions of goal hitting danced in her head
The direct marketer combed her database app
With her brain all a flutter and no chance of a nap.

(Good so far? More’s the pity, this part of the verse
Starts off OK or so, but it gets a lot worse.)
As day eased into night and fog gave way to flurries
The marketer listed and pondered her worries.

What of online? Would her tests give her forms a lift
Above completion benchmarks and their norms for gift?
She had rounded the ask amounts for ammunition
To increase donor’s fluency of their cognition.

And she’d set up opt-ins with behavioral science
With a goal of decreasing that darned noncompliance.
Asks for feedback were set by her touchpoints with care.
In hope that constituents would soon be there.

Her team would make sure no comment went uncollected.
She knew from the for-profit world: people expect it.
And would the donors who came to her events
Become loyal to her org and give them some presents?

Or did they want to sip Corbel on the veranda
And hope to catch sight of that Lin-Manuel Miranda?
Not to throw away shots, she had donor resilience
By focusing on her peer-to-peer experience.

And she would get her long-sought promotion
With her comms that were set up to evoke emotion.
She knew that end of year helps create urgency,
But also a failure would not be an emergency.

She was able to bank end of year support early
By creating a program to get debits quarterly .
And when she needed a communication to put a story in
She wasn’t bound to the calendar Gregorian.

All the tips and the tactics didn’t guarantee victory,
But the odds favor an address valedictory.
So as we bid farewell to twenty-sixteen,
Perhaps it is time to break our old routine.

For year end, let’s do things that will get us applause
And this year, we can be our own Santa Claus.

Nick