Surpass Your Year-End Goals With These 7 Tips

It’s no secret to fundraisers that the last three months of the year are often the most important time to secure donations and ensure a successful year. I’ve met with many nonprofits that are gearing up for this busy season and making sure they’re ready to capitalize. 

Here is some practical advice curated from nonprofits that are achieving and surpassing their year-end goals. If you haven’t started planning yet, it’s not too late. Or if you’ve made a start but you’re wondering if you’re truly ready, I hope this helps you finalize your strategy and feel confident heading into the end of the year. 

Develop Your Strategy

Before you dive in, take the opportunity to step back and assess your successes, challenges and strategic objectives, ensuring that the valuable time your team puts into your year-end campaign sets you apart in this busy season.

1. Ensure Clean Data 

As you begin to develop your strategy, make sure your data is clean. This means ensuring a clean and well-organized database. While data cleanup and maintenance should be year-round processes, blocking some time to ensure clean lists before campaigns launch will show your donors that you’re listening, engaged and trustworthy. 

Setting yourself apart in this busy giving season can be as simple as showing that you’re up to date on their preferences, giving history and contact information. Don’t let an error in a contact record — like a typo or an outdated address — keep you from cultivating a lifelong donor. 

2. Bring Finance to the Table Early

Once you’re confident in your data, be sure to bring your finance team to the table early to ensure that your end-of-year fundraising efforts are worth the time and resources you allocate to them. The entire team should have a strong understanding of your budget, your systems and your stewardship processes before you plan anything else.

3. Create Realistic Goals Based on Last Year’s Results 

As you create your goals for your end-of-year fundraising strategy, start by reviewing last year’s campaign results and determine what you need from this year’s campaign. Identify channels or initiatives that didn't perform as expected and decide whether to enhance or eliminate them. Gather the details of last year's expenses, including marketing, fundraising and staff time, to get a clear picture of your costs. Calculate the return on investment from last year and see if it aligns with your expectations. 

Work with your marketing and development teams to fine-tune your approach for this year. Then, review any unfulfilled pledges from last year. Reach out to them as a reminder or decide if they should be included this year. If you're planning on pledges again, send a personalized message to those who fulfilled their pledge last year, inviting them to renew their commitment.

Crafting Your Communications

Once you have a high-level view of your goals, past performance, and priorities you can move on to planning your communications. For brainstorming purposes, here’s a starter list of a few options where some nonprofits have seen success.

• Tell real stories of people who were helped by your organization.
• Ask volunteers to share their own photos beforehand or document their experiences with your organization on TikTok or Instagram Reels so you can feature this user-generated content on your accounts.
• Conduct a Q&A with a founder, employee, volunteer or board member.
• Show before and after pictures of what you’ve achieved.

We all know that emails are one of the most direct ways to reach donors. But with the deluge of email, how you craft your message is critical to achieving your goals. Here are a few ways to make your emails stand out this year.

1. Make It Personal

Consider targeted messages during your end-of-year campaign, especially for your current sustaining donors that have impact- and engagement-focused content. This is preferable to additional aimless solicitations at the end of the year. Let your sustaining donors know that your organization is appreciative of their current monthly or other regular frequency gifts — and why their continued support is needed.

2. Send a ‘It's Not Too Late’ Reminder

You can send another engagement-focused holiday greeting in mid-December as a part of your year-end campaign — or frame it as a “happy new year” message that you deliver closer to New Year’s Eve. Consider segmenting the holiday greeting for donors and non-donors, and including a very subtle, secondary call to action for first-time donations in the non-donors’ message.

3. Empower Your Advocates

Consider one or more social sharing- or engagement-focused emails that you can send to targeted constituents where a hard giving appeal is not appropriate or relevant.

4. Switch It Up

Finally, consider changing the length and look of your year-end campaign emails. If you traditionally send more conventional long-form messages during this time of year, think about alternative email formats — such as a postcard-style email with a strong image as the focal point with punchy copy and a call-to-action button — that could inject variety into your campaign. This way, you can switch up the email format for constituents who have already received long-form messages from your organization and haven’t yet made their end-of-year gift.

Here's to a great end of year. These are just a few tips to help get you started with end-of-year planning and ready to supercharge your impact. 

The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.