If you have questions about using the year-end engagement plan built into Donor Management, please check out our FAQ article for more details.
Before you start tackling those email tasks in Donor Management, there are a few helpful steps we recommend taking to make this process both efficient and effective.
Below, we'll show you how to set goals, how to gather the stories and assets you will use in your year-end campaign, and how set up your year-end donation page!
Goal Setting
Deciding on a goal for your year-end campaign can be accomplished a few different ways:
Review your fundraising goal for the entire year and use your left-to-raise amount as your year-end goal. Depending on your fundraising throughout the first nine months of the year, this number could be very large or very small.
Run a filter in your donor management system to discover what you raised during year-end last year and decide to increase by 10-20%.
If you'd like to work towards a number that is outside of dollars raised you can always focus on number of new donors, engaged donors, and renewed donors.
Having a goal makes it obvious how you will measure success - and communicating it to your internal stakeholders helps get others excited about the campaign and encourages them to help reach that goal.
Gather Assets and Stories
When you open the templates related to the year's end in Donor Management you'll notice that the templates suggest using some language that you might not have on hand immediately.
Here are the details you will need to fill out the templates when you're ready:
your mission statement
the number of individuals your programs reach each year
at least three "impact" statements (these can be pulled from your annual report)
a powerful client story + image of that client or a stock photo to represent that client
this story will be used in more than one email, so choose wisely!
a Giving Tuesday goal
this can focus on a specific program like "Raise $10,000 for scholarships" or a more general dollar-focused goal
We also recommend considering specific "branding" for your year-end campaign. This could mean using imagery, calls to action, tone of voice, graphics, and messaging that is specific to your year-end goals, and presents every piece of communication together as one cohesive campaign.
Set Up Your Donation Page
To help track donations that come in from your year-end efforts, we recommend creating a donation page that is specific for this year-end campaign.
In addition to being able to easily monitor success of your campaign, having a dedicated donation page for year-end giving creates a cohesive experience for your donors and calls back to the related communications you've already sent. (In other words, the messaging, title, call to action, and stories on this specific donation page should mirror the ones you included in your email blasts and social media posts!)
Remember - you can add offline donations in Donor Management, and attach them to this page's campaign so that those gifts will be reflected in your goal's total!