Year-End Fundraising in 2024: What to Expect

Nearly a quarter of nonprofits rely on year-end fundraising for at least half of their annual revenue, according to NonProfit PRO’s inaugural “Nonprofit Fundraising Study.”

With nonprofits placing such a great emphasis on year-end campaigns, it’s important to recognize what’s happening this year. Here’s a look at how year-end fundraising is shaping up in 2024.

Donor Behavior Insights

During year end, many nonprofits’ campaigns focus on soliciting financial support from their donors. For instance, Margaret Schilling, managing director of individual giving and engagement at Robin Hood, said that the nonprofit, which fights poverty in New York City, only accepts financial donations.

Other organizations, such as Fauna & Flora, are able to accept non-financial donations, but most donations received at the end of the calendar year are still monetary, said Brandon Baird, U.S. major gifts officer at the environmental nonprofit.

Donor-Advised Funds

Over the past few years, donor-advised funds (DAFs) have increased in popularity across the nonprofit sector. Schilling noted that Robin Hood ran its first DAF-focused campaign in October 2023.

“We reached out to individuals that we knew had DAFs — they gave to us via DAF — and we asked them for additional gifts for a particular issue that we were funding with our community partners,” she said. “New York City last year: Our community partners were seeing an increased demand on their services because of the influx of migrants. So, we appealed to individuals that we knew had DAFs and asked if they would make an additional exceptional gift to support some of this work.”

This year, Chariot sponsored the first-ever DAF Day on Oct. 10 to encourage giving through this rapidly growing donation type. Both Baird and Schilling said their organizations participated in the inaugural event.

According to Baird, DAFs are one the easiest types of gifts for donors to activate. “They've already made the decision to be philanthropic and to be charitable,” he explained. “And now, we just need to convince them that that's the pool of money to pull from. It's really easy for donors to do that through community foundations or some of the online options that they have for donor-advised funds.”

Volunteering

While financial donations are critical for nonprofits, it would be a mistake to forget about other types of gifts. According to Sona Khosla, chief impact officer at Benevity, “volunteerism is absolutely going through the roof,” particularly through corporate volunteering programs.

“We’ve seen the number of volunteers grow 33.5% year over year, and hours have grown 25% year over year,” Khosla said. “... We think this is partly because of the tough economy that we’ve been in over the last few years — high inflation — but also the push that many companies have had on volunteerism over the past few years.”

In fact, that ‘push’ — plus added flexibility for donors to give as they’re able as companies try to address what Khosla called “the economic fragility of individual donors” — has led to an uptick in volunteerism during year end.

“We did see quite a bit of an increase in volunteering last year around GivingTuesday,” she noted. “Donations tend to be the prominent thing, but volunteering and actions, we expect to see those grow this year as well.”

Year-End and GivingTuesday Fundraising Strategies

One historically big piece of the year-end fundraising puzzle has been GivingTuesday, now in its 12th year. However, 30% of nonprofit leaders who participated in the “2024 Nonprofit Fundraising Study” said their organizations did not take part in 2023’s GivingTuesday. Additionally, some organizations have been creating their own giving days at other points in the year to make sure their campaign stands out from the many taking place on GivingTuesday.

While Schilling acknowledged the challenge of competing with so many other nonprofits on one day, she said that Robin Hood continues to participate because it “absolutely wants to be in the conversation.”

“Last year on GivingTuesday, we asked for a particular amount,” Schilling noted. “It was actually, for us, tied to the number of years that we've been in operation, and we saw a big uptick there. Just by giving donors an actual dollar amount to respond to, we raised more money.”

While some nonprofits are forgoing GivingTuesday campaigns, Baird said that 2024 is Fauna & Flora’s first year participating in GivingTuesday in the United States. Even now, the organization is looking forward to expanding its campaign in coming years.

“The year-end giving season is heavily focused on that financial support,” Baird said. “We're certainly always looking for different ways to grow our visibility — we're growing our board here, we're always looking for corporate partnerships [and] places where our impact is really meaningful … Maybe there are ways that, once we get this under our belt and have the first year down here, we can expand that to a larger circle of folks and have some more interesting partnerships or announcements that we can align with that day.”

Khosla advocated for exactly that: to take advantage of corporate partnerships, especially toward the end of the year.

“It's a great opportunity for nonprofits to say, ‘Hey, if you're donating directly to us, make sure you're asking for your match from your company, or donating directly through your corporate workplace giving platform so that we get the match automatically,’” she said. “... Connecting back more directly to workplace giving at this time of year is really important because of those extra matching campaigns, which could double or triple the donation amounts that [nonprofits] are getting.”

Year-End Campaign Tips

When it comes to executing your nonprofit’s year-end fundraising — whether it’s for GivingTuesday in particular or not — there are so many strategies and tactics to choose from. For one, Schilling recommended “going back to the basics;” at Robin Hood, this has included personalizing communications and calling donors.

“Last year, we put someone on the phone with a set of donors who had not yet renewed, and she was able to get through half the list,” she said. “Half the list that she called, 40% of those renewed their gift, whereas the other half that she didn't call, only 15% did. That was confirmation to us that the phone still works. I think we're all exhausted by texting, we're all exhausted by emails. But actually, people, even if they're not picking up the phone, they're listening to their voicemail. So the phone is still a way to cut through the noise.”

As year-end campaigning inevitably winds down, it’s crucial to create an impact report to highlight the work you’ve done. Not only can an impact report provide clarity on successes and shortcomings with your year-end fundraising, but it can foster trust with and inspire donors, who often want to know how their gifts will be used.

“[It’s] really important for the end of the year that nonprofits [are] really preparing for impact reporting,” Khosla said. “Yes, you can communicate back the dollars that you receive, volunteer hours, the activities and outputs, but more importantly, what are the outcomes that those companies and employees have actually supported with their dollars and time? So, I would really consider thinking about how to report outcomes to organizations and individuals.”