The heat is on. Year-end fundraising season is here. 
How will you be maximizing giving, across all channels? Use these nine simple tips to rock your year-end fundraising.
Your website:
1. Supercharge your Home page
In this Simple Development Systems podcast, Steven Screen of UberDirect tells us that people aren’t going to your website on the last few days of the year to learn about your programs. They’re going with the intent to make a gift. Your job is to make it easy for them.
One method is by using what Steven refers to as a “home page takeover,” also known as a light-box. This year, Merchant’s Quay Ireland featured this dramatic light-box on their home page. You can do the same thing with an inexpensive little tool known as Pippity.
Another method calls for basically taking over the top half of your website, the “above the fold” real estate, and dedicating it to year-end giving.
2. Your Thank You page
Where do your donors land after making a gift? Your “Thank You for Your Donation!” landing page is one of the single most important pages on your website. Your donors need to be reassured that they haven’t fallen into some Internet black hole – and your Thank You page provides the perfect opportunity to engage your donors further. Take this opportunity to celebrate your donors! What a about using video? Here’s a brilliant example from Simple Development Systems member OneJustice of a video thank you:
3. Be a Donor
How easy are you making it for your donors to give online? Here’s a tip via Kerri Karvetski and shared in a recent SDS webinar: give two (or more) of your friends $10 and ask them to donate online. Ask them to be brutally honest in their feedback. What you might think of as a good end user experience could almost certainly benefit from some tweaking.
Your communications:
4. One is the loveliest number
Whether it’s your direct mail appeal, your website or your email appeal, narrow your year-end campaign down to ONE solid, heart-wrenching story. Your donors don’t need to know the details of how you do what you do — they only need to know that, through the beauty of their gift, they transformed a life. Keep it clear, keep it simple…with the Hemingway App.
5. Don’t forget your lapsed donors, major donors, and monthly donors.
Jeff Brooks nailed it: More mail, more money. This is not the time to leave off your major donors. Or, for that matter, your monthly donors. Segment your appeal and create highly personalized appeals, just for them.
6. The power of hand-written
Small shop tip: When it comes to direct mail communications, what’s the first thing you need your prospect to do? Open the envelope! Gather together your volunteers, your board members, whoever can lend a helping hand and hand-address those envelopes! If hand-addressing envelopes for your entire list is prohibitive, pull out your top donors and hand-address those.
Fundraising is everyone’s responsibility:
How can your board members, volunteers and staff get involved in year-end giving?
7. Email signature lines
One of the easiest ways is to create email signature lines for your board and staff members. Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention writes: “Email signatures (a.k.a. sig lines) are powerful, low-cost, high-return marketing tools (a virtual business card or ad) for your foundation or organization. What’s interesting is how seldom sig lines are used.”
Create a signature line tailored around your year-end campaign with a url linking to your donate page.
8. Put your board members to work!
Which of your board members can write personal notes, make phone calls, or ask and/or thank in person to selected donors (major, loyal, and lapsed)?
9. Matching gifts
Matching gifts provide a perfect incentive for year-end campaigns. Do you have a foundation connection or board member who might step up to the plate? When the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection added a challenge match during their 2014 mid-year campaign, their goal was 1.5 times higher than they’d generated in the past – and was easily met. Check out this post on Nonprofit Marketing Guide on 48 Ways to Ask for a Matching Gift in an Email Fundraising Appeal.
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I can’t wait to meet with you personally.
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