You know very well that a large percentage of your income will be coming in over the next 3-4 weeks (before the end of the year,) especially in the final week of December.
Here’s an easy plan that will allow you to connect with past and potential future donors before the end of the 12th month.
First, create a report with giving history for everyone who has made a gift in any of the past 3 years (’17, ‘16, ’15)-including restricted, capital, and annual fund. Event attendees and peer-to-peer donors should not be included in the report.
When creating the report, look for these things:
Lifetime total years of giving;
Total $ given;
Largest gift and the date of the most recent gift;
And most importantly, the amounts and dates of their annual fund gifts for the current year and the past five years—’17, ’16, ’15, ’14, and ’13.
Once you’ve got that information, here are the 3 steps to take in order to boost your year-end results and the long-term growth of your annual fund:
Set up 2-3 email reminders for the final 10 days of December for those who received your most recent appeal but haven’t responded. If you can, segment the message based on donor status, current, lapsed for one year, lapsed for more than one year, and prospects.
Call donors who haven’t given for the last year. You can sort them by the size of their last gift, total lifetime giving, or largest one-time gift. Reach out to as many as you can with a personal phone call at the end of the year.
Contact those who have given for 5 or more years and whose last gift was in “16 or ’15—those who are now lapsed, but were formerly loyal. Email them letting them know they have been missed and encourage them to return. Recapturing recently lapsed donors
usually has a huge impact on dollars raised.
Do you have any “end-of-year” strategies that you’ve found successful? Please share them with us here.