How to Prepare for Year End Before It’s Too Late
2 min to read ✭ In this post, we will go over the steps your nonprofit needs to take in order to prepare for year end fundraising.
This post is meant for nonprofits who plan to do it big for year end fundraising. If that’s you, then let’s jump right in! So what are the things your nonprofit should be preparing prior to the madness that will be year end fundraising?
1. Gather Your Impact Data
This data can be from 2018 or from 2019 to date, whichever you prefer. You’re going to be asking the same donors for gifts again this year and need to be able to share what’s been accomplished with your programming. That starts with data. You should have some system for measuring your impact—both for understanding the success of your nonprofit’s efforts, but also for marketing purposes.
2. Prepare Your Ad Accounts Early
With the nonprofits we’re partnering with for year end, we will have all ad accounts ready by the end of October at the latest. This gives time for team-wide feedback, small testing with sample groups of donors, and troubleshooting any issues that may come up. If you are planning on advertising with Google, make sure your Google Ad Grant and paid ad accounts are all set up correctly. We highly recommend testing Google Display advertising and some small batches of paid Google Search in addition to your Google Ad Grant. If you are also planning to do Facebook and Instagram advertising there are a lot of nuances in setting up Facebook Business Manager, so be sure to get everything running smoothly ahead of time.
3. Come Up with a Campaign Theme
Your year end fundraising deserves a campaign theme if you’re planning on really moving the needle compared to last year. This theme should be tied to your programming and have avenues to market off of. One of our partners who supports children and education themed their campaign “A Promise To The Future” last year, which opened up plenty of avenues for how we could help turn children’s dreams into promises that deserved to be fulfilled. Reach out to us on communityboost.org if you need support coming up with a campaign theme.
4. Create a Campaign Video
If you’re planning on really enrolling your current donors and especially a new audience into your mission during year end when there is so much competition from other nonprofits, you need a compelling video. You have plenty of time to make this a reality if you start right now. For tips on how you can create a best in class campaign video, check out the recent post on our blog.
5. Use Powerful Imagery
We live in a visual world and having compelling imagery is key to running successful campaigns. Whether advertising on Facebook and Instagram, setting up a Display campaign, or even sending mid-December emails to your constituents, strong imagery is often the component that tips the scale for an individual donor.
