Planning for Year-End

15 Dec Planning for Year-End

Let’s say that I’m a donor who wants to give a gift of stock. And I’m a procrastinator, so I decide to go to my wife’s office party instead of taking care of business. And I wake up to this fact at about 2:30 Wednesday afternoon the 30^th.

So I call your office.

Will anyone be there who can answer my questions? Will anyone be there to even answer the phone?

The answer should be YES to both questions.

Fundraiser’s Almanac – December

• Fall Appeal 2nd Drop and a Few Thoughts on A/B Testing
• Good News
• Planning for Year-End
• Filing/Data Entry
• Lapsed Member Letters

Being there for your members and donors is job number 1 for fundraisers. It goes without saying doesn’t it?

This year, New Years is on a Friday. That means someone (you?) needs to be in the office Monday through Thursday, picking up the mail and answering the phone. Here are several other things you might plan for that week:

• Assuming you got your appeal mail out the door, the last few days in December are a great time to send out follow-up emails. Explicitly reference the story and/or imagery in the appeal and remind people that there is still time to make a gift in 2015. I saw one social service group had good results emailing on the 27^th, the 30^th, and the 31^st – all three. I wouldn’t advocate emailing on Sunday this year, but perhaps Tuesday and Thursday?
• Get personal with your thank you letters. For most organizations, the mail will be fun to open during the last few days in December. The temptation will be to crank out “form” acknowledgement letters. Resist – you have time to do a better job. Make them personal. Tell a story. Hand-write a few. Consider calling a certain number (five?) every day – perhaps based on gift amount, perhaps randomly. Or consider passing along gift information to board members and asking them to call.
• Call your board members, or fellow board members if you yourself are serving on the board. Tell them how much you appreciate their board service this year and how you are looking forward to working with them in 2016.
• Get your filing done. At least get everything organized that should be in the donor files and the files themselves in the right order in the cabinet. Then read through at least your board members and major donor files. Organize the paper in chronological order and shred any redundant copies. For files that are considerably thick, consider summarizing the information on a brightly colored sheet near the front of the file.
• For foundations and businesses, request current annual reports and replace the ones you have been keeping with more current copies. Verify all their grant deadlines and note any interesting personnel changes and/or grants they are promoting.
• Make a plan to promote planned giving more in 2016. Keep in mind that planned gifts are simply gifts that require planning. A gift of stock is a planned gift under this broad definition. Making a gift of appreciated stock can be very advantageous for the donor. You may believe most donors know all this already, but many do not, or at least aren’t thinking that way. What will you do to help stimulate their creativity?

That should keep you busy.

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Direct Mail Challenge update. (See A Few Thoughts on A/B Testing.) The two letters dropped on Friday of last week. The mailing lists were each 1,490 pieces. Board members and key staff were included on both lists as tests. I got my test pieces in today’s mail. Results coming soon.

Cheers,

-da

Photo credit: Bullock’s Oriole courtesy of Walt Kaesler.

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