Summertime: The best time for planning your end-of-year campaign
Summertime: The best time for planning your end-of-year campaign
By Lindsay Jordan, Write On Founder + CEO
My phone starts ringing off the hook in November. As nonprofit leaders begin to receive fundraising emails for various causes, many are reminded that it is “end-of-year fundraising time” and, oops, they forgot to put together a strategy. Maybe there is still time to get out a letter and capitalize on this time of year when nearly one-third of all gifts are made worldwide, they think, and give us a call.
Unfortunately, slapping together a one-time email at the end of the year because everyone else is doing it is the best way to ensure a spectacular failure for your fundraising campaign. Whether your plan is direct mail, an online campaign, or a hybrid approach, successful end-of-year campaign planning starts in the summer. Read on to learn why.
The Active Fundraising Phase
We recommend to our clients that most end-of-year campaigns run in a 10-12 week cadence, and, for truly outstanding results, be only one of two or three (or even more) cadences run in the same fashion throughout the year. However, if you have the capacity to run only one, the end of the year is a great time to do it.
If you are running a 12-week cadence, that means that your campaign will begin in early October. To launch your plans, the following tasks must have already been completed:
Cadence theme selected, including messages and visuals
Frequency and schedule of mailings, emails, and social media posts set
Subject matter experts (program directors, guest writers, clients with great testimonials) identified and delegated their tasks
Fundraising goal identified and strategy agreed upon
Language developed for each piece to be distributed during the cadence
October through December are all about execution - distributing messages and responding to donor inquiries. This is a period that demands flexibility and the ability to respond quickly to the ups and downs of donor engagement. If you’re waiting until the third quarter to start thinking about your campaign, you are already well behind.
Planning for the End-of-Year Campaign
With all the assets and deliverables needed before the cadence begins, we recommend building the plan in July and using August and September to solicit key gifts and design needed graphics and/or marketing pieces.
Some key questions for planning:
What is your overall fundraising goal? Are there milestones within the campaign, such as Giving Tuesday or a special anniversary, that merit their own one-day fundraising goals?
Who will the funding come from? Is it appropriate to break down your goal into segments, such as funding from board members, returning donors, new donors, corporate donors, etc.?
What are the unique characteristics of the primary audience (and secondary, if you’re segmenting)? What messages does this audience best respond to?
Beyond fundraising, what is the purpose of this campaign? To educate? To inform? To engage? How can this campaign be used to solve “the problem?”
Using the information gathered above, build your cadence theme. The theme is the reason for the campaign and should clearly communicate what a donor will take away from the experience of giving, what they might feel when they make a gift, and the impression the campaign leaves upon them about your organization.
Once you have your plan in place, you can begin soliciting pre-campaign donations that will help motivate and inspire donors to give during your campaign. Pre-campaign donations might include gifts like:
Matching Gifts - Donors love a good 2:1 or even 3:1 match when making their contribution. Use larger donor gifts during key moments in the cadence, such as your launch, around a special milestone, or at the end, to inspire new and repeat donors.
Challenge Gifts - Like matching gifts, challenges are great motivators for donors. The difference between the two is that a matching gift is a guaranteed donation (usually up to a certain amount), whereas a challenge gift will be made only if a certain goal is attained. This goal could be a dollar amount raised, a number of new donors, or even new visitors through the door. These gifts create a sense of urgency in that they are time-bound and if you don’t meet the goal, you do not receive the challenge gift.
Corporate Partners - The end-of-year appeal is a great way to leverage your corporate partners with sponsorship opportunities and employee giving. Have a handful of companies dedicated to your mission? Host on-site activities during the campaign like a lunch and learn or volunteer appreciation event to drive donations and bolster giving.
LYBNTs and SYBNTs - The planning phase is also a great time to reach out to donors who gave last year but not this or some years but not this (commonly called LYBNTs and SYBNTs) to let them know you are launching an end-of-year fundraising drive and invite them to participate in the campaign to help ensure its success.
Influencers - If your campaign includes a heavy online piece, August and September are also the time to line up the influencers you would like to elevate your campaign message and invite their audiences to give. This works especially well if the influencers are willing to make a campaign gift themselves to kick things off.
Depending on your campaign, there can be a number of additional considerations in the planning phase, such as:
Optimizing your website for donations
Building out a social media strategy that supports the cadence timeline
Donor recognition and stewardship
Purchase of branded campaign merchandise
Planning any wrap-around campaign events, in-person or online
Considering in-kind donations
If I were to ask a room of fundraisers in January who had a great end-of-year fundraising season and who felt their campaign performed poorly (as I ask almost every year), the room will undoubtedly be split. About half the folks I talk to have learned to leverage the end-of-year campaign as an important fundraising tool, and the other half isn’t hitting their fundraising goals.
There is a reason for this. Diving deeper into the folks who are typically not satisfied with their end-of-year fundraising results, we find some commonalities. Nonprofits who do not hit their end-of-year fundraising goal typically:
Started planning too late
Sent just one appeal
Had an unrealistic fundraising goal
Did not consider the communication preference of their primary audience
Did not leverage any of the pre-campaign donor tools mentioned above
The end-of-year campaign has a formula for success, and it starts in the summer. Right now is the perfect time to begin planning for your biggest end-of-year fundraising haul ever! And we’d love to help you in that success. If your nonprofit simply doesn’t have the capacity to properly plan for and execute an end-of-year fundraising campaign this year, call or email to schedule a complimentary discovery session today to see if Write On is a fit for your needs. Email info@writeonfundraising.com or call 888-308-0087.