End-of-Year Fundraising -
Don’t Shoot Yourself in the Foot!
Here is another post about end-of-year fundraising, and this time I’m going to draw on my own experience as well as general common sense. I donate to many organizations, often times small amounts because I know that “donor participation rates” are a big deal, as are donor retention rates.
What I really hate is when an organization approaches me for an end-of-year donation as if I’ve never made a donation to them before. It certainly sends me the message that they don’t care and don’t really know who I am. On the flip side, when I get an email or letter that says “Last year you donated $125 on December 15th, and we would like to ask if you’d increase your donation to $150,” that impresses me. As any fundraiser will tell you, asking for a specific amount, and furthermore an increase over the previous donation is a good business practice.
Today, implementing these ideas into your end-of-year fundraising plan is super easy if you have the right tools for the job. If you want to get a bit technical, this blog post from Michelle Paul, our Director of Product Development, and Allison Klein, Platform Innovation Specialist, echos what I have written above. It also gives some terrific examples of how to manage your list as well as some mock-fundraising letters. If you’re a PatronManager user, this will all seem familiar, and if not, you can at least get a peek at how easy this is do to when you’ve got a CRM or fundraising database that is well-organized and has clean and updated data.
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