The biggest donation day of the year for most nonprofit organizations is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. It feels like December 31 is breathing down my neck. No pressure, right? Stressing about what to get for everyone on your holiday shopping list? I know I am.  What about your donors? I’m [...]
People don’t give because it’s the end of the year. They give because you provide them with an emotional reason to donate. Year-end may merely predispose folks to give at this time. And I say may because: Some folks are predisposed to think about their blessings during the holidays occurring [...]
Year-end giving presents an extraordinary time for nonprofits to raise more money from individual donors than any other point in the year. It is also a time when fundraisers get too creative arguably, on the wrong things – and consequently spend too little time on the right things.  A quick [...]
December is around the corner and we want to share best tips for your year-end fundraising. Sit back with your eggnog, put your feet up and review our list of what you need to know so you can have the best giving season ever: 1. Share your metrics for your [...]
What if I told you there’s a teensy little digital year-end fundraising tweak that your nonprofit could use to skyrocket your fundraising results? Would that be of interest? Darn rootin’-tootin’! Okay. First let’s look at a typical Donation Landing Page with a call to action via some compelling text, maybe [...]
In my last posts, I walked through the factors that should be considered to create your year-end fundraising goal, and followed-up with a practical strategy to level-up results by expanding your army of front-line fundraisers with volunteers. Now it’s time to consider message and channel – and who is going [...]
In my last blog, I talked about the factors that need to be considered to effectively and credibly create a year-end campaign goal – the ones that I ignored that got me fired from my first, big fundraising job. Now that you’ve learned from my mistakes, you’re probably looking at [...]
Email solicitations continue to be effective, accounting for 28% of all online revenue (Nonprofits Source). However, the average office worker receives over 120 emails per day (The Radicadi Group), so how do you cut through the clutter? As a former development team member myself, I’m much more critical of solicitations [...]
For all of the content available to us this time of year, all the how-to guides and webinars about #GivingTuesday and year-end giving, none of them generally address the most important planning element to an effective fundraising campaign: A financial goal. Beyond the obvious, a goal aligns resources – people, [...]
Storytelling is an innate part of fundraising. Whether or not we do it intentionally, we are always in the midst of constructing a narrative about our organization, its work and why people should support it. During year-end fundraising campaigns, organizations tend to step up their storytelling efforts ten-fold. Some campaigns [...]
Don’t delay. The end of the calendar year is when most folks engage in philanthropy. This is the time when your annual fundraising goals will likely be met, surpassed or put on life support. Give yourself ample time to plan all the elements of your year-end campaign. Create your strategy, [...]
If you're like me, you're starting to think more about the dots between #GivingTuesday and year-end giving – and how fundraisers should leverage #GivingTuesday and year-end to raise more money, and certainly more than we did last year. If you're asking yourself questions like this, you can catapult yourself ahead [...]