End-of-year fundraising do’s and don’ts

Ann Fellman: We’ve got the doors open, and everybody’s jumping in. Welcome back! I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already, and you’re in the right place — it’s Fundraisers Focus Week, and today we’re talking end-of-year fundraising. Gail Perry is with me. Hi, Gail!

Gail Perry: Hello! How are you doing? Looking forward to talking with everybody today.

Ann Fellman: I know, I know. So, everybody, what we do is we jump in — we usually have people joining from all over the world, so tell us where you’re at. What’s your weather? I’m in Minneapolis, and it’s seventy-six. No humidity. It’s lovely.

Gail Perry: And I’m on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and it’s about eighty-four right now. We have an ocean breeze, so I’m very happy.

Ann Fellman: Oh, another Minneapolis person! An ocean breeze — I swear, yesterday Vanessa was on Vancouver Island, that’s where she resides. I’m stuck right here in the Midwest, but we do have water and lakes and all that good stuff. Oh, and Arkansas — a hundred degrees right now.

Gail Perry: That is hot. Wow. And I bet it’s humid.

Ann Fellman: Someone in the chat says they’ll be in the Outer Banks next week. Alright — what I really want is someone floating in a pool, or in a lounge chair, getting out of the office and enjoying the next thirty minutes. Let’s go to our happy place, because we’re with fundraisers — we’re in a great community. And today we’re going to talk end-of-year fundraising do’s and don’ts. But before we get into that, just a couple of housekeeping items for everybody.

Yes, we’re recording. Yes, you’ll get a copy of the slides — thank you, Gail, for offering that up.

Gail Perry: Absolutely.

Ann Fellman: And remember the Q&A tab at the bottom of our console — use that to log your questions for Gail, and we’ll cover them tomorrow in the roundtable discussion. We’ll have Alice Farris, we’ll have Vanessa Chase Lachshund, and we’ll have Rachel Muir as our fabulous host, and we’re going to have a really fun roundtable conversation from all the questions throughout the week, as well as any new ones tomorrow.

So, before we fully jump in — if you’re just joining us for the first time this week, my name is Ann Fellman. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer for Bloomerang, and we make great technology that helps you raise more, from donor relationship management to online fundraising tools, events, and volunteer management. It’s really about helping you raise more, and this is a great example of that — we also like to create great content and resources to help you do just that.

Before we jump in, one more resource I want to point you to: GiveCon, happening May 3rd through 6th, 2027, in Atlanta. It was a real success this past May, and it’s a great way to come together with other fundraising people — you don’t need to be a customer, because we cover all kinds of topics, like what we’re covering today with Gail.

So, Gail Perry is here from Gail Perry Group. I think we can just jump right in, Gail — thank you so much for joining us.

Gail Perry: You’re so kind, thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here, and I want to welcome everybody again. Year-end fundraising is fraught with energy, and somewhat tension, and maybe some anxiety — so I hope I can help you look at your year-end fundraising program with some excitement, and the notion that you’re going to sail right past goal. Is everybody ready to sail past goal? Alright, let me go ahead and share my screen.

I want to welcome everybody again from around the country — I’d love to know your organization. A lot of you already told me where you are, but if you could tell me your organization too, that’ll help me get a feel for who’s here and your background. I’ll probably be asking a bit more about your fundraising position, and how much control you have over your actual year-end fundraising execution.

A little bit about me: I have a brand-new headshot, and I’m so excited, everybody — I have a new book coming out in about three or four weeks. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do in my career. It’s called Easy Fundraising and Friend-Making for Board Members, and our motto is “make friends first, ask later.” If you’d like to know more about the book, there’s a QR code — I invite you to check out the resources I’m developing, and let me know what you need for your board.

I’ve been around way too long, but it’s lots of fun to talk about year-end fundraising. Today we’re going to do five do’s and five don’ts — this is my summary slide, and I’m probably not going to read every single one, since we don’t have that much time. But you might want to print this slide out and think deeply about what it means and how you can execute these ideas, because these ten ideas can help you raise so much more money. These are tactics — yes, strategy too, but these are things you can actually do.

I do have a caveat, though: don’t feel like you have to do everything, because a lot of these strategies take staff time, and you need to be careful about what you can actually accomplish. I know everybody’s already short-staffed and trying to do too much with too few people. So if you’re going to be successful, choose the areas you’re going to focus on, and I’ll tell you where your shortcuts and hacks may be — so you can raise the money you need and still stay sane and sleep at night. We all want to be able to sleep at night.

Let’s start with the do’s. What can we do? I might beat this to death because I think it’s so important: remember the donor retention numbers. Overall, across the United States, organizations are losing about fifty percent of their donors every year — which means that all these lovely, passionate people who’ve already voted with their money, who trust your organization and want to support your work, aren’t going to renew their gift.

So I’d suggest your number one strategy for your year-end campaign isn’t the new folks. You want to segment, you want to do this and that, but keep the donors you already have. Your current donors renewing their support is the easiest money you’ll ever raise, because they’re already with you — they’re already your passionate friends and supporters. So when you’re writing to them, phoning them, and using all the different outreach strategies to touch those current donors, remember that they’re your passionate, loyal stakeholders. That shifts the tone — it makes the invitation to renew more gentle and more fun. You can talk with them about the work you’ve done together, what they’ve already helped accomplish, and how they can take your work to the next level.

If you focus on them as your happy friends — I’m really big on the idea of friend-making — it’s easy to say, “come on, let’s do it again.” And at the very end of your campaign, when you’re still looking at the people who haven’t renewed, you can say, “we haven’t heard from you yet.” You shift the tone a little and treat them like one of your best friends, and of course they’re going to renew — they’ve just forgotten. The technical term for all these people is LYBUNTs: they gave last year, but, unfortunately, not this year. Not so far.

If you want to get motivated about focusing on your renewals, here’s what I suggest: run a report of everybody who gave last year and total it all up. Then total up everyone who’s given so far this current year. The renewal money from those prior-year donors is your body of work for your year-end campaign, and you know exactly how much money is on the table. Thinking about it that way helps focus and shift you, and maybe makes it a little more fun. The more personal you can be in that appeal — whether you’re reaching them through text, phone, direct mail, or digital — the better.

That brings me to my next do: think about your leadership annual fund donors. They may be delivering as much as half of your year-end revenue, because you’ve got people giving a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand dollars — hopefully on an annual basis. Those are the people you really want to renew, because it takes an awful lot of hundred-dollar gifts to make up for one five-thousand-dollar donor. So when you’re focusing on donor renewals, start with your leadership and annual fund donors — everybody will have a different definition of “leadership,” but you can probably name them and run a report to know who they are. You’re inviting them to stick with it and take another step forward together. I think donor renewals and leadership annual fund donors alone are enough to probably push you right over your goal.

Now, the middle bullet — there’s a lot of hemming and hawing about major donors. Do we include them in our year-end appeal, or not? When I was a staff fundraiser at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of my major donor prospects said, “Why don’t y’all ever ask me for money?” We were developing him for a big campaign gift, so we’d taken him out of the annual fund communications — and I think that’s a mistake. You may need to take a case-by-case look at your major donors, especially if you or others have an assigned portfolio. Some major donors do need to know about the annual fund, and they’ll help — it may not be much to them at all to write a five, ten, or twenty-five-thousand-dollar check to support annual initiatives. It never hurts to think about focusing there too. Maybe board members can help with a personal note — you could take your regular annual fund letter and handwrite a note: “wanted to be sure you were included in this year’s appeal, would love to have you participate.” Something gentle like that helps them feel touched and included in the organization’s wider initiatives. It’s a subtle, delicate activity, but I highly recommend it.

I’m also really big on warming up your donors before you ask. One of my mottos is: never surprise a donor with an ask. If you let donors know the campaign is coming, they’re ready to hear it — they’re more likely to accept the ask when they know it’s coming and what it’s going to accomplish. I’ve had a lot of success with clients starting with a “thank-a-thon” and organizing board members. Let me tell you a story: a lot of organizations have taken my advice and, way back in August or early September, gotten their board members together to do a big thank-you thank-a-thon — bring in pizza, do it all together. It’s much more fun as a group, and if there’s food involved, board members tend to show up.

There’s nothing like a phone call from a board member. One of my clients — an older gentleman — was really nervous about making these calls, and awkward about it. He had to make a thank-you call to a longtime donor, and it turned out they had a wonderful conversation; the trustee said afterward how much he’d enjoyed it. Two weeks later, a ten-thousand-dollar check arrived from that donor, saying how much he’d enjoyed the phone call. I can’t say it’s statistically significant, but it’s proof that this kind of outreach can have a huge impact. Sometimes, if you nurture the donor relationship strongly enough, you don’t even have to make an ask — the donor just offers the money. I’ve seen this happen for million, even million-and-a-half-dollar gifts, just from clients following this advice without ever making an ask. That’s why we make friends first, and ask later — the friend-making takes care of the ask.

If you’re doing a thank-a-thon, board members usually need a script, and it doesn’t take long to craft one. It’s nice to have the board member ask the donor, “What made you give? I’d love to know how you came to be a donor to our organization” — that can open the floodgates, and when a donor talks about how they feel about your work, sometimes they talk themselves into being really generous. I think that’s what happened with the ten-thousand-dollar gift. And if organizing a thank-a-thon is beyond your capacity, you could create a short video and send it by email to your annual fund donors ahead of the appeal — that’s not hard to do, and a lot of people will watch a video from an organization they support. Everybody’s different in terms of which channels they respond to, but as a boomer, I might be responsive to a video by email myself.

Here’s a pet peeve of mine: I’m on a university board, and they’re worried about sending out too much email to their donors. Sometimes I want to throttle them! Best practice is to send enough email, because your donor is going to miss some of it. You might do one paper letter — most people aren’t doing paper anymore, but that’s exactly why a paper letter lands: so few organizations are still sending them, and there’s data showing a physical letter carries much more weight than an email appeal alone. So you have to send plenty of email appeals and reinforce them with social, text, and more — but the paper letter still lands. What I’ve found, from tiny organizations to big university boards, is that people are afraid of sending too much.

So here’s my note: repeat yourself without apology. There’s data from advertising — and it’s relevant here too — showing it takes about seven exposures to an ad before recognition really goes up. You may need to land in your donor’s inbox seven times, or at least have multiple touches across channels, before they even register that you’re running a year-end campaign. So don’t be afraid of that, and don’t back off — repeat yourself without apology.

And since you’re likely using multiple channels, you need to send the same message across all of them, or it gets diluted. Name your campaign something simple — “Kids First” or “Doctors First” or whatever fits — nothing overly clever, just plain and easy to communicate. If you’re running one message on Instagram with different stories and pictures, and a totally different message and visuals elsewhere, your team might get bored with the message before your donor has even registered it. I read once that fundraising teams get so bored with their own message that they’re dying to change it — but the donor has barely noticed it yet.

Someone asked whether we need to tailor the message to different channels — that’s a rich question, and maybe we can tackle it more tomorrow. There’s research on different generations responding to different types of channels, and other research suggesting donor identity drives it all — a twenty-year-old and an eighty-year-old who are both “cat people” might respond to the same message. It’s a complex question.

Number five among the do’s: plan your thank-you process ahead of time. When you’re writing your year-end appeals, I hope you’re working with a professional writer, because writing an appeal letter isn’t intuitive. AI can help, but you need to give it a clear set of rules — there’s a whole skill called prompt engineering for pulling out what you want. I won’t get into whether or not you should use AI here, but I do think focusing on your thank-you letter and thank-you process now helps you plan the arc of your whole campaign. If your first round of appeals goes out in late October, your thank-you process needs to be working immediately.

There are simple decisions to make, too — like who signs the thank-you letter. Some organizations have the CEO sign letters above a certain gift size, and the development director sign the rest. Donors aren’t always impressed by a signature from the hardworking person in the development office — they like attention from the organization’s leaders. It would be great if your thank-you could come from a trustee or board member, and it’s worth setting up a fast turnaround time, because the speed and warmth of your thank-you primes the donor for the next gift. That’s why it’s worth thinking through now.

Now let’s go through the don’ts — mistakes that are going to cost you, my friends. Don’t make a weak ask. Everybody writes this letter, tells the story, builds the case — and the actual ask ends up buried in paragraph four. If your ask is in paragraph four, there is no ask in your letter. You’ve got to say clearly: “We are writing you today to ask you to join with us.” Some experts say you need to ask several times in the letter — “your gift will...” People tend to pussyfoot around the ask, and we’re in fundraising, everybody — we should be proud of inviting people to support our work. It really helps to name a specific gift amount, and if you can segment your list and base the request on the donor’s last gift, even better. I think Bloomerang’s got some wonderful tools for that — by the way, I love Bloomerang. I’ve been working with and supporting Bloomerang for over ten years, and I want to give my endorsement — it’s a great CRM that really cares about its people, its customers, and clients like you.

The flip side: don’t send too few communications. It’s going to take two, three, four, five, six, seven touches to reach your donor, like I said earlier — one expert found that the follow-up to an appeal alone can raise fourteen percent of the overall goal. That follow-up might sound like, “haven’t heard from you yet this year, we’re closing out, come join again” — be a cheerful cheerleader. Assume your donors missed the earlier appeals, because they’re not reading everything. Plan those appeals to go out through the last week of the year, and don’t be afraid to be all over their inboxes.

Number three: who’s got a committee running the show? I know you don’t have to admit it, but the approval process — don’t do it. If a committee runs your letter, you’re going to end up with schlock, because committees don’t understand fundraising principles, and they water everything down. Don’t do it — and if you do, blame me. Tell them the experts say you have to trust the professional team. Consensus review is where year-end appeals go to die. Figure out your process now, my friends, and protect that December window in terms of approvals.

When you’re making the ask, don’t make it all about the money — make it about impact. “Your gift is going to help these children,” not “please make a gift of fifty dollars so we can help the children.” Now the donor is helping the children. And use the word “you” throughout your letter and appeals — you can do this, you can do that — not “we can do this, and we’re so great.” You. You. You.

And the last one: make a gift to your own organization on your donation page, because shopping-cart abandonment is huge. The more boxes donors have to fill out, the more places they have to click, the more impediments there are to making the gift. You might want to know all sorts of things about them, but make the gift easy first, then follow up with those questions afterward. And think about what kind of email goes to your donor immediately after the gift — you could put a thank-you video in that email that will genuinely touch someone.

So — if you don’t check your donation page, excuse my French, you’re going to be in trouble. Above all, do check your donation page. A complicated checkout process will drive anybody crazy — they’ll grit their teeth and give up. So, everybody, that’s the whole run-through! If I contradicted myself anywhere, we’ll discuss it tomorrow — and yes, no committee. I can’t wait to see your questions, and I hope this has been invigorating and fun, and that you had a few laughs or a few “aha” moments. I’d love to hear from you.

I have a couple more slides — have a great year-end! And here’s my email. Awesome.

Ann Fellman: Awesome. And yes, that book Gail mentioned that’s coming out — that’s definitely something worth checking out, since engaging boards is such an important thing, and a thank-a-thon is such a great way to reconnect with supporters. So I’ve launched a poll: if you’d love to learn more and connect with Gail, please raise your hand on the poll. And if you want to learn about Bloomerang — I know some of you had questions about things like how to send video without it getting stuck in spam — come back tomorrow. We’re doing the same time and place, but it’ll be longer tomorrow, a solid hour, since there’s so much ground to cover and we had such great engagement with questions today.

Last thing before I let you all go: we have our fifty-dollar Uber Eats gift card drawing, and I drew the name of Brad Wright — Brad, our team will email you the details. Come back tomorrow, because tomorrow’s a big one: two hundred and fifty dollars. We’ll send a copy of the recording and the slides, which will all be posted tomorrow. Gail, that was awesome — thank you.

Gail Perry: Thank you — I hope y’all enjoyed it, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week. Definitely come back tomorrow, we’ll have some fun.

Ann Fellman: We’re definitely going to have a lot of fun tomorrow, and a lot of ground to cover. Like you said, let’s have a great end-of-year fundraising season, and we’ll have a detailed conversation tomorrow. Same time and place, everybody. Thank you, have a great rest of your day, and hope to see you tomorrow.

Gail Perry: Take care.

Ann Fellman: Take care. Bye.

Gail Perry: Bye.