Year-End Fundraising
Writing at Connection Cafe recently, Sara Spivey offered these suggestions for getting your year-end fundraising act together … now! As Sara outlines …
September
- Conduct a database audit: make sure supporter records are up to date and identify any missing data records and amend them
- Make sure you have email, street addresses and phone numbers for supporters—when you get ready to run a multi channel campaign is NOT the time to discover you don’t have more than one way to reach a supporter. Plenty of appending services out there that can help you with that NOW.
October
- Identify campaign concept and case for support
- Write campaign copy and design creative
- Define segmentation strategy
- Discuss matching program with board members
- Plan messaging within other stewardship pieces and website
This is pretty basic, but critical, Year-End 101 stuff.
To graduate to Year-End 201, you must also be thinking about your entire contact stream, especially over the November-December period. You weren’t planning to ask just once, were you?
And to graduate to Year-End 301, you need to be planning how you will integrate all your marketing channels — mail, online, phone.
Get started. And get your data right.
Tom
One response to “Year-End Fundraising”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Tom goes to the head of the class! Year-end 301 should include some analytic analysis on last year’s campaign. What performed? What didn’t? What channels deserve more investment this year and which channels don’t? Make every dollar work harder in 2012…