How to Plan a Successful Year-End Fundraising Campaign

Take it from us: charities should begin planning and preparing for their year-end fundraising campaigns earlier than you likely have.

Best practices suggest that the ideal lead time to optimize campaign success is five to six months before your launch date. Since most annual fundraising campaigns kick off on Giving Tuesday and run through the end of December, your preparation should begin in July or August. We’ve drawn on extensive data, donor insights, and expertise from charity professionals to bring you our guide to planning and preparing for the most successful year-end fundraising campaign yet, based on our new eBook.

‍

Know and understand your donor base 📝

Case in point: your charity needs to know who their donors are. This is the starting point for understanding how to reach and serve your unique donor base. To plan and execute a successful end-of-year fundraising campaign, your charity should be able to answer the following questions:

Who are your donors?

• Identify key characteristics like age, gender, location, occupation, and income level
• Donation frequency, average gift size, and the financial giving capacity of donors are also important
• Learn preferences like communication method of choice

What do your donors care about?

• Personal interests and hobbies
• Other organizational or community affiliations  

What motivates them to give to your cause?

• Do they have a personal connection to your area of impact?
• Why did they choose your organization?

Who are your high-value donors?

• Focus on traits like donation amount, giving capacity, and lifetime value

What channels do the majority of your donations come from?

•  Ex. Online giving portals, email marketing, direct mail or phone calls

When do you see spikes in donations coming in?

• Do you see an uptick in donations after an email campaign is sent out?
• Pay attention to timing – many charities see the most donations come in during the last 24 hours of a fundraising initiative. 
• Identify peak times to plan campaigns more efficiently, and front-load or back-load key pieces of content.
• If you notice that many donations come in during the last week of December, it’s a clear indicator that this period should be a focus for your end-of-year efforts.

To answer these questions, analyze your donor data and conduct donor research. Dig into demographics, donation amounts, and the frequency of contributions. Your CRM and/or donor management software will be a treasure trove of giving information, patterns, and trends. 

A simple Google search of donor names and locations can also be a valuable research-gathering tool, especially for learning more about high-value donors.

‍

Set your fundraising goals 🥅

Once you better understand your donor base, it’s time to move on and set a financial target for your fundraising campaign. Be ambitious, but realistic. Your target should be attainable and ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). Other factors to consider are:

• The results of past campaigns: Analyze year-over-year data from your previous end-of-year fundraising campaigns. How much do you typically raise?
• Current giving trends: Are there giving trends, or social and economic factors that might impact donations?
• Industry benchmarks: What are similar charities of your size and capacity aiming to raise?

Once a target has been chosen, break down your goal into smaller, manageable milestones. Consider weekly or daily targets. 

Assessing small milestones will give you a sense of your campaign’s progress. If milestones are being missed or exceeded, don’t be afraid to reassess and change your goal. Your fundraising goal can be thought of as a living target. 

To give your charity the best chance of achieving an ambitious fundraising goal, we suggest raising a portion of your target prior to the launch of your fundraising campaign. Consider reaching out to high-value donors directly before your campaign begins to seek "head start" matching pledges and donations.

‍

Identify and segment your target audience 🧑🤝🧑

To understand and meet the needs of different types of donors, we recommend segmenting your audience and creating donor personas. 

Start by analyzing your audience based on factors like age, and location, or giving data and building these groups into segments. 

Segmentation will allow your charity greater control over communication with your audience, tailoring what messaging and material various segments receive. Customized communication is shown to significantly increase open rates, click-throughs, and donations. 

For example, contacting older age groups through direct mail may achieve higher donation returns, whereas younger age groups may prefer social media-based donation appeals.

Once the segmentation is complete, use donor data to create a few different giving personas that outline the distinct motivations, preferences, and giving habits of your donor base. If you don’t know what the preferences and motivations of your donor base are—ask your survey your list of donors through email, website pop-ups, or another method of feedback.

‍

Build a campaign timeline 📅

Designing a well-planned campaign timeline, with touch points along the way will help you manage your fundraising campaign smoothly and efficiently. 

Your timeline should include important calendar dates, like the campaign launch, and any fundraising events in addition to task and project deadlines. Include pre and post-campaign duties, such as post-campaign thank yous and pre-campaign matching asks for high-value donors. 

You can also find a detailed 6-month timeline for end-of-year giving in the Resource section of our new eBook.

‍

Outline the roles and responsibilities of your team ☝️

Have you delegated all the roles and responsibilities for the fundraising campaign to the appropriate team members? 

Your whole team should be on the same page, and understand who is assigned which tasks. 

Once the campaign prep is underway, ensure managers are conducting regular check-ins and receiving regular progress updates from staff. Have meetings to review duties and make adjustments as needed.

‍

Don't forget: post-campaign follow up 💌

Now that your annual campaign is over, ensure your charity has a plan to follow up and thank donors promptly.

Share the campaign outcomes, thank them for supporting your cause, mention any projects their money will help fund, and keep them engaged with updates on your work and future opportunities to support.

‍

‍

This is Part 1 of our new blog series on year-end giving. The series is based on extensive research and the expertise of charitable executives, as outlined in CanadaHelps’ new comprehensive ebook on maximizing year-end fundraising for the Canadian market.