Three Things to Tackle Before the Rush of End of Year Giving
Happy last week of July Folks!
Mid-year is here, baby.
You wrapped up the first half of the year (yey!) and are have started looking forward to what you need to do to meet your budget between now and December 31st.
Come fall, you are gearing up for something great, right? I mean - you can’t NOT be great knowing that roughly a third of all donations come through to organizations during the month of December and 12% of those gifts come in the last three days of the year.
In order to help meet your goals at the end of the year, I have some thoughts on things you can do before the end of summer to really start prepping your donors for the greatness you have planned. This will already set you apart from so many organizations, nearly 30% of whom make no touchpoints with their donors before making an end of year ask (yikes!).
Let’s start off with an exercise:
What was the last touch point you had with your donors (in total, major gift donors, donors from an event, etc)?
Write that down:
When was the last touch point you had with your donors?
Write that down, too:
If it has been a minute, you may need to do a reintroduction of sorts.
Here are a few ideas:
Get an email update out on recent happenings at your organization, on a specific program, or maybe some new staff members that have joined your team
Send a note or short video from you or your Executive Director (or Program Director!) on a recap of Q2 or what you are looking forward to achieving over the summer
Reach out individual to people saying something like: “It’s been a while….would love to grab a coffee or a catch up soon. Would (XYZ date) work for you?
Bottom line: Start here and then move to the steps below.
If you have been in touch with your donors more recently - A+ and way to go! Here are some other suggestions of what to do during these summer months when folks tend to not be thinking about fundraising:
1.Crunch some numbers. You can’t know where you need to go if you don’t know where you’ve been. Some important data points are included below, but if analyzing data is new for you or not your thang - check out this free guide I’ve put together for you.
Total monies raised from Jan-June
Total number of donors who gave from Jan-June
Total number of gifts from Jan-June
Retention rate of your donors Jan-June
Attrition rate of your donors
2. Serve your donors. I can’t say this enough - I’ve actually done an entire blog post about this, but it’s not a good look to always only be asking. At some point, you need to give back (yes, even you, the nonprofit). You need to provide value to your supporters be it volunteers, board members, or donors. I don’t mean give MONEY back (duh!), but there has to be something you provide on a regular basis to serve your donors. Having trouble coming up with any ideas? Here are some ideas to get you started. My suggestion? Do at least one of these things each month for the next 4-6 months and be amazed at how loved on your donors feel.
3. Build that email list: I know we live in a time when growing your social media is all the rage. It’s fun, it’s creative, and even though it can be a lot of work - it feels easy. Maybe because we are personally on our phones all of the time scrolling our own channels? Somehow we feel “expert” in it because we use it so often. I’m here to tell you (brace yourself) that I would rather you focus your attention on email. Yes, I said it, EMAIL - build that list. Online marketers estimate that for every email address you attain, it is worth $1/month (or $12/year for you math majors). That means that if you have an email list of 10,000 people, you could be raising: $120,000 from your email solicitations at the end of the year (gah!). I’m guessing that is more than you have ever raised off your social media platforms, right? So what to do...Here are some ideas to get you started:
When was the last time you took alllllll of the business cards you’ve collected over the last six months and entered them into your email list? Never? You and me both. But let’s change that! Block an hour on your next slow day and JUST DO IT.
Do you make it easy for people to sign up for your newsletter? Ie: is there a simple form on your website or do you have a pop up that arrives when someone comes online to check you out? No? That’s another good place to start.
Finally, for those of you still not bought into the fact that social media is not where it’s at: add that #linkinbio hashtag on your channels and then replace whatever is in there with the link to sign up using their email.
So to recap…
If it’s been a minute since you last connected with your donors - start there.
Figure out your first half of the year numbers to see what you’ve done and where you still need to go
Love on your donors - give, give, give to them these next few months to make them feel valued
Build up your email list
Summertime may be considered slowtime in fundraising, but make this an opportunity to set yourself apart from the rest. PUT IN THE WORK NOW and you will be thanking yourself come fall.
Xo,
