For many nonprofits and ministries, the months between October and December are crucial to their financial health. For some organizations as much as 50% of their annual revenue may come in during these months. And, estimates indicate as much as 80% of that 50% comes in the last week of December – the one between Christmas and New Year’s. As a side note, you may need to help board members understand this phenomena as they look at cash flow statements.
It’s time now, to plan out your fundraising strategies to ensure you end 2021 strong so you can begin 2022 strong!
Now is the time to get to work to ensure maximum success and to generate the most dollars for the mission of the organization.
- Determine now if you will be using an online appeal, a direct mail appeal or a combination of both. Obviously, you will need to look at your database (even if it is a spreadsheet) to see if you have email addresses, mailing addresses, or both. Additionally, you will want to understand who is on your mailing list. For instance, if many of your donors are elderly who don’t use email, then you will want to make sure you mail them a letter. FYI – Research is showing that direct mail appeal letters are more effective than email appeals.
- Determine the focus of your request. The focus of your request is not, “because we need money.” Instead, designate a certain project or service that will be the beneficiary of all funds received through the annual appeal. Then, all of your communications will focus on this effort as you work to make your donor the hero – remember, the organization is not the hero (sometimes this is really hard for organizations to understand).
- Clean up your list. Our lists have a tendency to become like our closets. They become a mess until we take the time to clean them up, remove those people who no longer live in the area, or are deceased. You may also want to establish a policy for how long to keep someone on the list if they do not make a contribution to the organization. Your list is not “set it and forget it.” As you think about a database to manage your list, know that many fee-based systems will actually validate names and addresses for you.
- Look at your web presence. When people receive your request for funding, they are going to visit your social media pages and your website. Make sure these are up to date. Is the staff and board list current? Does the website reflect current program or service efforts? Are social media pages current, or have you not been active? Now is the time to get active, because out of sight is out of mind.
- Identify volunteers who can help. If you are going to be using direct mail, volunteers can help fold and stuff envelopes, and address them.
- Lay out your timeline. When do you want your donors to receive communications from you? Ideally, your request needs to be in the mail by Thanksgiving. Any later and it will get mixed in with all of the holiday mail. Using your target mailing date, work backward to identify due dates for all of the specific tasks.
Are you overwhelmed and challenged at the thought of writing your annual appeal letter? Contact us with your questions, let us know how we can help.
