The winter holiday season is especially important to a nonprofit organization. Your nonprofit data software probably demonstrates to you that you raise the most money during the holidays, with up to a third of total donations coming during the month of December and 10% happening during the final few days of the year.
Of course, you have your existing donors, whom you value and cherish. However, you should always be trying to reach out to new donors. This is especially true during a time of economic downturn when your usual donors may not be able to afford to give as much as usual.
Types of Donor Campaigns That Are Most Effective During the Holidays
A campaign that is branded or ties into the holiday season is more likely to be successful. For example, campaigns tied to the social media hashtag “Giving Tuesday” are likely to receive a lot of exposure. You can capitalize on this trend by creating branded donation pages and pop-up ads on your website branded with the hashtag and set to deploy seasonally.
Don’t underestimate the power of offline giving appeals. A tangible card or letter, perhaps with a small thank-you token inside, may attract more attention and gain more goodwill than online appeals would.
Whatever you include in your new donor campaign, be sure to start planning it early. Your raiser’s edge software should be installed and ready to go early in the year, ideally in January. You should be collecting email addresses throughout the year for a controlled series of appeal blasts starting in the last two or three months of the year.
How Holiday Donor Outreach Differs Form the Rest of the Year
There are two reasons why people tend to give more at the end of the year. The first is because of festive, charitable feelings connected with the holidays. Since many people give gifts to loved ones at this time of year, you can promote the idea of a donation in someone’s name as a gift to support a cause that’s important to them. The other reason why people tend to give more at the end of the year is that they are looking to take advantage of tax deductions. You may want to emphasize this point in your appeals.
It is also helpful to phrase appeals in the positive language of possibilities rather than in the negative language of scarcity. If you appeal to potential donors about all the good that you’ll be able to do with their donation, it may inspire them to give more than they would otherwise. On the other hand, if you phrase your appeals in terms of scarcity (e.g., time is running out, there’s never enough, etc.), it can have the opposite of the intended effect. You may either scare your donors into hoarding resources rather than donating or create a sense of futility and doubt that what they do really makes a difference. Therefore, if you can streamline nonprofit data and present it in a way that shows in concrete terms how donations are helping, it may encourage more generosity.
Remember that you do not need to run your end-of-the-year campaigns all on your own. There are many developers offering software specifically to help out nonprofits, especially during the busiest time at the end of the year.
