5 ways to make your year-end nonprofit campaign shine

Somehow we’ve suddenly arrived at October 1st, the beginning of the last quarter of the year and with just 3 months to go many nonprofits are heading into what is the most important time of the year. Year-end nonprofit fundraising campaigns whether planned in advance or occurring organically account for such a large part of fundraising revenues that how well a charity performs over the coming months can often determine the overall success of the year. In fact more almost a third of all annual giving takes place in December for many organizations, with that in mind it’s easy to see the importance.

Preparing for year-end campaigns can be a key to overall nonprofit fundraising results and with that in mind here are five tips to help your end of year campaign reach the goals you set forth.

 1 Assess where things currently stand – Now is the ideal moment to review how 2014 has performed to date, with 75% of the year gone it is time to take a step back and look at what has worked well and what might need further refinement in your fundraising strategies. Hopefully you mapped out detailed goals for this year and can compare how donor registration, fundraising events, and social media campaigns have performed so far and of course take a look at actual revenue trends versus last year. If good suggestions have come from your audience this might be the time to enact them for your year end push.

2 Internal preparation – Are you certain that everyone in your organization understands the importance of year-end campaigns? You’ll assume that they do but there is no harm in taking the time to reiterate that message and in turn help prepare them to bring their very best to what will be a very busy time of year. Capturing that same energy will not only benefit your supporters but encourage your team to be a part of this, letting them know how appreciated they are and that they are the key component to everything working smoothly. The better your team understand the year-end campaign and message the better the results will be.

3 Align your website and social media – Don’t just sit and wait for December to roll around and expect your donor audience to automatically be engaged. Use these last few months of the year to raise the spotlight via your website and social media to spread the news about your year so far and what you can accomplish in the weeks and months ahead. Creating a targeted campaign via social media and your site can be very cost effective, extremely engaging and present a real time message to your audience about the importance of their participation. Be creative and fun but most importantly keep the message informative via the addition of recent stories and the impact that support will make – your audience will notice the difference.

4 Trend Analysis – The industry is changing rapidly with donor interaction and technology continuing to alter not only how people communicate but how they choose to support an organization. Ask what data has surprised you most so far this year versus expectations whether that be positively or negatively and determine how can you modify things in time to make a difference this year. Just as the industry has changed in the last twelve months chances are that there is a positive trend that you can seize and bring to fruition perhaps even sooner than planned.

5  List your objectives – There’s more than history supporting the fact that year-end fundraising efforts have continued to dominate results, but remember that the donor audience is the active part of this equation and make the decisions that influence these donations. Just as your audience is sitting down to consider where their year-end support will be committed – now is the optimal time to reach out and connect with your audience.In essence you’ll never find a better time of year to capture the imagination and attention of your donors – it’s therefore vital to create messages that are specifically aligned with your year-end campaign to help build the excitement and response that your audience seek. Making a difference remains at the heart of that message and there’s no better time to make contact and share that message.

Remember that for donors two of the factors considered most critical are clarity of the nonprofit’s objectives and the ease of action/support. Keep those two things in mind with everything that you do and your year-end campaign can be your best ever. Don’t forget that you can help to kick it all off with the continued growth of #GivingTuesday.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including PCI compliant inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.