Gliding Through the Fundraising Season

| GS INSIGHTS

When you think of the holiday fundraising season, what springs to mind? For me, it’s the aesthetic of Tim Burton’s movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, which combines visual elements from both Halloween and Christmas. Why, you might ask? Because as everyone else is preparing their Halloween costumes and carving pumpkins, fundraisers are frantically preparing for the end-of-the-year giving season. So, how can you ensure that Giving Tuesday and your holiday gala go off without a hitch? The key lies in the planning process. Here are some resources to keep you organized and prevent any nightmare before Christmas scenarios.

The Holiday Giving Landscape

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of holiday fundraising, let’s step back and examine why it’s so important. Similar to the retail business, the majority of giving happens during the holiday season. This infographic by Classy points out some interesting statistics. Around 33% of all online gifts are made in December, and 10% of all donations are made on the last three days of the year. Couple this with the fact that on average, in the month of December, donors give 80% larger gifts than the rest of the year, and you can see why it’s important to double down on your efforts during the holiday season (and perhaps take a few extra vacation days come January).

Planning Your Fundraising Activities

The first step of crafting a holiday fundraising strategy is to determine what types of activities to focus on. Some typical ones include Giving Tuesday campaigns, year-end appeals, auctions, and galas. If you are looking to set yourself apart from the competition, you might try out some more esoteric ideas such as hosting an ugly sweater party or a polar plunge, which involves people diving into freezing cold water in the middle of winter. Let’s examine two of the more popular activities.

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday, an annual event that started seven years ago, is a relatively new addition to the holiday fundraising season. According to the official website, this event can be thought of as “a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.” Last year, the event generated over $300 million in online gifts across more than 150 countries. Occurring on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (this year it falls on November 27th), this event is like the Black Thursday of the fundraising season.

So, how exactly does it work? Organizations can utilize this social media-based event to raise funds, solicit matching grants from foundations, activate or increase their social media followers, recruit volunteers, and more. The key is to set a specific campaign goal in advance, and create a plan to carry out that goal. Organizations may choose to limit the timeframe to Giving Tuesday itself, or extend it to longer than one day, perhaps tying it in to their end-of-year giving campaign. To get started, you can visit the Giving Tuesday website to join the movement, download the toolkit, and access additional resources. If you are interested in learning more about the movement and exploring Giving Tuesday strategies, Mobile Cause has posted a very useful recorded webinar on the topic.

Holiday Galas and Events

Planning a gala or other fundraising event takes time, and getting started may seem a bit daunting. If you are not a professional event planner, don’t fret, as there are a number of resources out there to help you along the way.

The article “6 Spectacular Fundraising Gala Tips for Savvy Nonprofits” is a great place to start. This article explains six event planning steps, starting with creating a program focused on your fundraising goals, and ending with using fundraising software to manage your event. The article provides concrete examples for the novice event planner, including a sample program and event theme suggestions, such as a masquerade, Vegas casino night, Hawaiian theme, and a black tie event.

For a deep dive into the event planning process, the book Event Planning: The Ultimate Guide to Successful Meetings, Corporate Events, Fundraising Galas, Conferences, Conventions, Incentives and Other Special Events offers comprehensive guidance, complete with tips for managing events and handy forms. In addition, The Ultimate Fundraising Event Checklist: 17 Actionable Steps by Fundly will help you ensure that you have dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s. It outlines seventeen general steps for fundraising events, along with the individual tasks necessary to complete each step. For example, in order to complete step number 7, “Brand Your Event,” you first need to determine your theme, name your event, write a hashtag, create an event logo, and standardize the color palettes, logos, and images.

If you are looking for a more interactive learning experience, in October GrantStation is hosting two webinars of special interest to the event planner. “Missionizing Your Holiday Events”, on October 10th, takes participants through a step-by-step process to infuse their organization’s mission into their events while boosting donor engagement and growing major gifts. For guidance on the financial aspects of fundraising events, the webinar “Tracking Special Events in Quickbooks” on October 18th is a good bet. 

And speaking of finances, the article “5 Gala Hosting Tips for the Small Nonprofit” provides some useful suggestions on how to host a successful event on a tight budget. One suggestion is to limit your ticket sales to packs of two to boost attendance and encourage your supporters to bring their spouses. Another interesting idea is to engage younger donors by hosting an alternative fundraising event that ties in to your organization’s mission. For example, a local homeless shelter may create an activity where participants sleep outside for one night in order to build empathy for the local homeless population.

After the New Year

As the holiday fundraising season draws to a close, don’t forget to show your appreciation. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, the donor retention rate for donors who gave in 2016 and then again in 2017 was only 45.5%. So, on average, organizations are losing more than half of their donors in any given year!

A great way to ensure donor loyalty after the holiday season is to create a thank you video. CharityHowTo’s webinar “How to Make a Thank You Video that Delights Donors and Gets Them to Give Again” offers a guide to creating donor thank you videos that convey gratitude and inspire donor retention.

Action steps you can take today
  • Click on the links above to learn more about how to organize your holiday fundraising strategy.
  • Visit the GrantStation website to sign up for the event planning webinars.
  • Discover additional resources for fundraising success on the Pathfinder website.