DonorPerfect is here to help you achieve your year-end fundraising goals! We’ve created a comprehensive list of tasks for the last few months of the year. We hope it will help alleviate the stress from your busy giving season, and spark ideas that will boost your fundraising results.
For DonorPerfect users, 37% of all giving happens in October, November, and December. The final few months of the year represent a season of giving and generosity, including deadlines for charitable giving tax incentives, creating perfect conditions for nonprofits to raise a lot of funding in a relatively short amount of time.
How can you make sure your mission stands out from the rest? Try looking at the techniques you may already know! There are four key stages of donor engagement, often referred to as the donor engagement cycle, that help your donors get to know your mission and organization and inspire them to give generously.
Identification
The planning, identification, and acquisition phase is the time to get organized, clean up your database, and set goals that are realistic and ambitious. You can use wealth screening tools, marketing lists, your own database, and local resources to find potential year-end donors. This is also the right time to clean up your database, prepare and segment your mailing lists, and start drafting your year-end appeal.
Qualification and Cultivation
The cultivation stage is your time to shine! Take advantage of every opportunity to connect donors and prospects to your mission. Help them share your vision of what the world could be, how your nonprofit is making your vision a reality, and how your donors and community play a role in it.
Cultivation requires active listening, too. What inspires your donors to give back? Are there resources or pieces of information your community could benefit from having? The more you learn, the better you can tailor your communications and appeals to include messages that will motivate your audience to give.
Solicitation
After you’ve narrowed down your donor pool and have spent quality time cultivating them, you’re poised to invite them to be part of your mission as supporters. You can kick the year-end giving season off with Giving Tuesday or your own giving day to generate excitement. Crowdfunding is a good way to get your community involved, and encourage your donors and volunteers to be champions for your nonprofit.
Stewardship and review
You did it! Now time for the fun part: thanking the donors, volunteers, and staff members who made your year-end giving season a success. Some statistics suggest that donors who are personally thanked for their first gift within 48 hours are up to 400 times more likely to give a second time.
It’s certainly challenging to thank every single donor within two days of their gift, so if you can’t hit that mark, don’t worry. Thanking donors in any way, at any time, is so much better than nothing. In fact, a lack of acknowledgement is one of the main reasons donors stop giving.
