I am almost finished interviewing the fundraising gurus in my 2009 Year-End Strategy Telesummit. And here’s my Year-End Strategy #2 showing you how they suggest putting together your year-end fundraising plan. I’ll drill down on each one of these in the next few posts and discuss it in more detail.
1. What types of communications media will you use? Will you use mail, email, phone calls and in what order? Direct mail guru Mal Warwick recommended in the Telesummit that nonprofits send several appeals via letter, email and phone.
2. What’s the schedule of appeals? When will you send out mail, vs phone calls, vs. email? What will follow what? Schedule them out over the next two and a half months and make a real plan.
3. What will be the theme? You need a “dynamite marketing concept” for the appeals, says Mal Warwick. The visual look of the email and letters needs to be the same. And the font/typeface/white space/logo of your annual appeal needs to be the same in email and direct mail. And the message is the SAME.
4. What’s your budget for the campaign? How far can you stretch your dollars?
5. What will be the purpose of your end of year appeal? Will it be for “general unrestricted?” (boring) Or will it be for something specific that donors can really latch on to? (interesting) Kivi Leroux Miller recommended in the Telesummit that we focus on raising money for a specific project in our end of year appeals.
6. How will you segment your list? Will you pull off a certain group for face to face calls? Will you send a special set of appeals to nondonors vs donors? How will you solicit lapsed donors? Or last year’s gala attendees? Or mothers of school age children? Consider all the ways you can segment your list and make that plan.
7. What role will your board members play? Will they make some face to face calls? Will they make thank you phone calls? Will they hold holiday parties asking for in-kind gifts? Will they send email appeals to their own networks? Be sure you activate them!
8. How will you promptly thank your donors? Will you find 7 ways to thank your donors so they’ll give again when asked? Will you organize a team of board members to make prompt thank you calls when gifts are received?
9. How will you evaluate your campaign? Will you compare to last year’s? Will you evaluate the size of gift or the number of gifts or both? How will you measure your success?
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