Year-End Giving Starts NOW
Have you caught your breath now that 2023 year-end fundraising is over?! Nonprofit donor comm teams have been working LIKE MAD the past few months—from fall galas to GivingTuesday to year-end campaigns… wowza.
But it’s all for good reason, since it leads up to year-end gifts. Stats tell us that “December giving accounts for roughly one fourth (26%) of annual nonprofit revenue.” (Neon One)
All that flurry doesn’t guarantee fundraising success, however. Year-end activity doesn’t magically equate to big dollars without steady donor engagement the whole year through.
That’s why January is the perfect time to prepare for 2024's year-end push by assessing the effectiveness of your 2023 activities.
To help you get started, download my free 2023 Reflection Tool for nonprofit CEOs and directors.
Taking time to reflect is essential if you want to 2024 to be more effective than 2023. Too often donor development teams repeat the same donor activities and actions from year to year while expecting different results. That never works.
It can be scary to ask your team to STOP doing things you’ve always done. It can be hard for your staff to LET GO of legacy projects and tasks.
But if you want 2024 to be different from 2023, your approach to donor engagement will need to be different too. I’m not talking about 100% overhaul.
You’ll need to work smarter, investing time and energy in the activities that truly engage your donors and inspire them to move closer to your mission every month of the year. You need to align your team’s efforts and hours to activities that matter. Here’s the thing:
Effective donor engagement isn’t dependent on any one interaction in 2024. It’s the cumulative impact of specific touch points and interactions over the course of the year.
So if your org’s donor engagement actions didn’t inspire donors to step closer to your mission in 2023, we should talk.
I work with nonprofit CEOs and directors to design and refine donor engagement strategies that move donors closer to the heart of your mission. The orgs I work with see change from the inside out, which strengthens donor connections and attracts donors to your mission.
Does that sound like the kind of 2024 you’d like for your org and team? Then we should talk. Reach out to schedule a Change Chat so we can explore options for working together.