Your End Of Year Fundraising Questions Answered
I had the pleasure recently of teaming up with my fundraising bestie and copywriting guru Julie Cooper to host an “End of Year Appeal Writing Made Easy” workshop.
We had close to 2,000 fundraising friends sign up, and we kicked things off by surveying the audience about their year-end fundraising goals (which we defined to include Giving Tuesday). The response was overwhelming and we received a ton of really great questions.
As we wrapped up the webinar we realized there’s an entire universe of fundraisers that could benefit if we shared the data and questions we received, so we’ve pulled it all together for you to share with your team. Included in this article you’ll find:
- The results of our flash polls we conducted on year-end fundraising
- Audience questions from our fundraising friends who attended the webinar
Let’s dive into the poll data.
Year-end Appeal Creative (inclusive of email and direct mail):
- 96% were writing their own appeals and not using a copywriter
- 78% had not started writing as of late August
Budget:
- 55% were planning to spend less than $2,500 on end-of-year fundraising expenses like design, printing, postage etc.
- 21% were planning to spend upwards of $5,000.
Fundraising goal:
- 17% had a goal to raise $15,000 – 25,000 at year-end.
- 22% had a goal to raise $25,001 – $50,000 at year-end.
- 18% had a goal to raise $50,001 – 100,000 at year-end.
- 21% had a goal to raise $100,001 – 1 million at year-end.
Your burning end-of-year fundraising questions answered!
“How do we ask for specific things while transparently keeping the money in an undesignated fund (rather than making the gift specifically for specific line item/fund)?”
Here are 3 ways to be specific while raising unrestricted funds from copywriter Jeff Brooks.
“Should we put a stamp on the (remit) envelope or not?”
According to direct mail fundraising experts like Mal Warwick and Jeff Brooks, the rate and type of postage you use to send direct mail has little impact on response. This is true for both the outer envelope as well as the return envelope with one exception: by putting first-class stamps on the return envelope, you will increase responses to your direct mail.
“I’ve heard we should first ask people to give, if not give, advocate for org, and lastly to volunteer for org. Is this a good progression or will it just confuse them?”
Any appeal you write should have only ONE call to action (asking for the gift) which should be asked for at least three times. Asking people to do three different things will overwhelm them and reduce the odds they respond.
“What about using ‘we’ language, as in ‘together, we’re saving lives’?”
No! That’s organization-centric. Be donor-centric. The appeal is not about how great you are, it is about how great the donor is. Not sure if your appeal is you-centric enough? Check out the free Bloomerang Comms Audit tool!
