Last-minute tips for year-end fundraising success

We’re coming down to the wire on another year! But we know that doesn’t mean the work is over. As a nonprofit that’s making the world a better place, there’s a lot of things that still need to happen.

As the clock ticks away on one more year, take a second to look back at everything you’ve accomplished and celebrate all of it with the people you love. 

But before we all write those out-of-office signatures, these last-minute tips for end-of-year fundraising success will help get you ahead of the curve as we head into a new year. 

And make sure that you don’t miss out on some of the most important weeks for a nonprofit: the end of the year!

1. One last hurrah, or email

It’s always a good time to lean on the channel that’s giving your organization the greatest lift, especially as we run out of time. Now we aren’t mind readers here, but we have a funny feeling that this is probably email for you.

There are two essentials when building these last few emails:

1. Urgency: These are the last weeks of the year. The clock is absolutely ticking here, and donors are nearly out of time. Your team likely wants to put a bow on the year and crush those goals, so invite people into that same feeling of anxiety (oh, I meant excitement!). Calls to action like “Only 7 Days to Make an Impact” or “Time is Running Out on Making a Difference This Year!” are examples of leading with the deadline.
2. Scarcity: Offer a limited amount of matching gift opportunities, or highlight how close you are to a specific fundraising goal. Donors want to feel like they’re making an impact (this is why they’re giving!), so spell it out with exact dollar amounts. Examples of calls to action here could be “We’re only $3,000 away from meeting our goal of feeding every child in our city!” or “The next $10,000 donated will be matched by our corporate sponsor, X! Don’t miss the chance to double your impact!”

Also, make sure those emails land in the right inboxes. Segmenting your audience is going to make those emails work twice as hard for you. Donors are different from volunteers, who are different from staff, so they all deserve different emails. Each of these groups add something unique to your organization. Make sure they feel special during this special time of year.

Two groups that could be targeted around the end of the year are past donors who are coming up on a year since their last gift. You could thank them for the gift from the previous year and simply tell them what a difference it made over the course of the year. And then you could also build a unique email to people who didn’t give last year, but had given before that.

The important thing when segmenting these two groups is not to label people who haven’t given this year as lapsed donors. They may not have given for over 12 months, but they might be planning on giving again this end of year — just a few weeks after they had given the year before. It could appear a little ungrateful to put them in the lapsed camp only because they didn’t give at the time that you were expecting.

2. Don’t forget to mention the tax deductions

The single biggest reason (ok, I guess holiday spirit is real too) why these final few weeks are so important for nonprofits is because of the tax incentives for making donations before December 31. So don’t forget to lean into this motivation.

People are giving to your nonprofit because they want to make a difference in the world, not because they want more money. However, by giving during this strategic time, they can make an outsized impact while minimizing their tax burden.

So don’t go overboard in focusing exclusively on the tax benefits of donations. Focus on the impact a donation can make for your organization, and then mention that now is the opportune time to give — not only for your organization but also for them.

Here’s a link to the IRA’s explanation of charitable contribution deductions. It’s definitely detailed, but you may want to share this with your community to help create that sense of urgency. December 31 is coming up on us all quickly!

3. Retarget those people who landed on your website

If you have the capacity to run retargeting display ads during these critical weeks, please do so! And if you don’t currently have the software, consider adding it to the toolbelt for the upcoming year.

The single best audience to follow up with during these last couple of weeks are the people who made it to your donation page but didn’t end up clicking submit. They didn’t land there by accident. They care about your organization. So simply following up with an ad saying something along the lines of, “Don’t miss the chance to make a difference this year” can make a big difference.

If you aren’t currently running digital display ads at your nonprofit, consider setting up the tracking code on your website so that you can have a better idea about who’s visited your site during these important weeks. Knowledge is power, so installing a Super Pixel (that’s Feathr’s name for the code that tracks your audience) on your site over the next two weeks may do wonders in giving you actionable data on the people you want to reach out to next year.

And if you’re in the middle of building out those last-minute display ads, here are a couple more ideas to keep the creative juices flowing.

4. Be a little more social this season

Social media is a uniquely strategic place to be as a nonprofit this year end. This is where you can share visuals, allowing your entire community to see how far you’ve gone in reaching your fundraising milestones.

Video has become more and more valuable as a medium, especially on social media. So, if possible, try to get a couple of last-minute videos online. They don’t have to be anything fancy, but there’s no substitute for the amount of personality you can share by letting them see that beautiful face and making the case person to person.

Wyzowl estimates that video is 52% more likely to be shared over other forms of social content. And this is the key! To gain access to new networks, you need to be creating content that pushes your community to tell your story for you.

5. Go the extra mile on your website

We know how easy it is to put off that spring cleaning on the website. But if your website isn’t ready for the end-of-year season, then all your hard work in marketing isn’t going to make the difference that it really should.

Even if the website is a project that will take all next year, focusing on a few things that will make an outsized difference this year end is critical. Here are three ways that you can make a huge difference with your website with only minimal effort:

Start with the donation page:

• Is it mobile friendly? Is it loading quickly?
• How many words are there before someone can donate?
• Is there a clear call to action at the bottom?

Make payments a breeze:

• Do donors have options that fit their life? Can they pay with PayPal or Apple?
• Does the payment page have a million forms to fill or is it only the essentials?

Take the guesswork out of donation amounts:

• Are there a couple of easy to choose from amounts?
• How many total decisions does someone have to make before giving?

Taking it a day at a time

I’m personally looking forward to this holiday season, and taking a little time off. But I also have the funny feeling that it’s not always going to be relaxing. There’s a lot of moving parts these next few weeks. 

So I want to simply acknowledge that you probably shouldn’t aim to bite off all five of these ideas. But if one of these has been on the to-do list for a while, we hope when you check it off you’ll feel an even greater sense of accomplishment this year.

We believe that technology should be built to make your life easier, not harder. And we know all these digital marketing ideas require effort to pull off.

So we hope that you aren’t spending extra time this year end writing individual thank yous or exporting all your data into Excel to build a report. If your current marketing platform doesn’t offer you the tools to automate thank-you emails or provide you with pre-built, easy-to-read marketing reports, we hope that you don’t wait to make that one of next year’s resolutions.

Reach out today to see if Feathr can help you and your nonprofit’s marketing efforts really soar from the end of this year into the far future!