Seriously, this is the busiest time of the year of any development professional. Even if you started planning your year-end campaign a year ago, there is always something that appears from nowhere. So double-checking won’t hurt at all.
Here’s a concise toolkit that might help you to survive till the final of a year-end giving campaign. It might not, but anyway 10% of annual donations to charities that are made during the year’s last 48 hours will not come by themselves.
- Subscribe and read your favorite fundraising sources is a season’s must-have. You might find an inspiration in a standardized toolkit from a top newsletter, or in a very low-key update by a not-so-well-known young blogger. So many great resources are producing supporting materials for fundraisers! You can receive dozens of up-to-date toolkits, advice, ideas, and motivations from writing experts.
- Review your campaign plan, check all of the deadlines and monitor each task. Obvious, but now it is the time to finally go this way.
- Request a proofreading from people of your life is the best source of a feedback about understandability of calls to action, user-friendliness of a design, and even checking for typos. And if your family and friends are not talking to you anymore as you’ve been under the water since the campaign’s hard launch, go disturb your coworkers (but be aware — more likely they are at the same year-end timeline). Spend a minute asking them, it worth saving hours to fix any mistakes later.
- Thank your donors for each gift, new or continued. It’s never too much of sincere gratitude. It’s just one more reason to share more stories of an impact done because of the support. Temporary out of ideas? I’ve got you covered.
- Keep everything you’ve produced during the campaign to keep a track of the communications, to figure out what works and what’s not, and to simplify the next year’s campaign planning. Or just to keep your email appeals for a good memory. It’s better to save it now rather than hopelessly trying to find it in all these solicitation communications and thank you notes when the campaign is over.
- Rest well and try to stay happy — this it a foundation of your productivity. Obvious again. But important to follow as these days your hard-working brain needs to work on the edge. And your supporters and teammates are in need of shared happiness too.
These are short 6 reminders that can help you to stay strong and make your year-end fundraising campaign to be a success till the very end. Save it and use in a case of emergency. I mean, right now.
Anna Kanterova,
Atlas Corps fellow working on ending chronic homelessness with Development team of Miriam’s Kitchen
BONUS: If you went all the way from “Plan” to “Done” of any fundraising campaign — here is your healing GIF “scrapbook” collected by Classy.org team. I feel I’m going to miss #6. Feel free to share your favorite piece in a comment section below!