What Happens In January?

It’s Week 42 – just 10 more until year-end. Your fundraising may feel less urgent than it will in December, but it’s definitely showtime. While you are giving your donors and prospects a chance to respond to your appeals, step back and spend your One Hour this week to think about 2021. You are working your plan through December; now is the time to look at what follows.

When you wake up on January 1, I want you to be ready to work your new plan. Daily fire-fighting and last-minute solicitation will consume you if you don’t carve out some time to focus, so this week, pull out your 2020 calendar for some reflection.

Basing 2021 on 2020 will be more solid than basing it on 2019. In the most unusual year ever, many charitable organizations either shut down entirely or were significantly limited in the services they could provide, and those on the front lines providing food, medical care, and education found themselves launched into an exhausting, sustained overdrive with no clear end in sight.

While activities have changed, focus on the constant – the relationships with people who sustain your giving. If they were inspired by your mission a year ago, they are still out there, even if your performance or competition season was suspended or your beloved in-person event was cancelled. As we look toward 2021 (desperately avoiding terms like “pivot,” “these unprecedented/uncertain times,” and “the new normal”), put your organization’s closest relationships at the center of your plan and work outward.

Lots of us had to step away from decades of learning what works and throw the 2020 spaghetti against the fridge to see what would stick. Twenty years of experience didn’t give fundraisers much more of an edge than two; you either made some calculated guesses and swung for the fences, or you hunkered down to ride out the storm.

Before making incremental changes in your plan, step back and consider these questions:

What fundraising and communications activities did you keep mostly the same?

Which did you change, trying something new for 2020?

What results did you expect, and which outcomes surprised you?

What worked best? How can you do more of that next year?

What fell flat? Take that out of your 2021 plan.

What resources do you need – more person-power to make personal outreach to donors? Stronger communications effort to undergird fundraising? Or did you have to eat your seed corn, as the analogy goes, meaning you couldn’t do the cultivating and asking you needed to do because of a drop in revenue to pay for that effort?

Make some notes, then let them sit for a little while. You are starting your plan with plenty of runway for 2021; once you capture your initial responses, you’ll turn those questions over when your mind is still, and come up with sharper reflections on where you’ve been and where you’re going. Add to your notes as new realizations emerge over the next week or so.

If you’re open to helping other readers, please share your questions, successes, or challenges in the comments. You never know when your bright idea can light someone else’s world too.

Make Warm Connections With Donors​

We’re at Week 41 and perhaps you’re observing Indigenous Peoples Day. You might even have today off from work, and you’re enjoying a break from video meetings. If you’re lucky, it’s pouring rain where you are like it is where I am, and why is that good?

Because when you’re stuck indoors it’s easier to carve out your One Hour *today* to move your Annual Giving program forward, and you can cross it off your list for the week, heading into Tuesday with a big check mark on your To Do List.

This week is for connecting. People have your first appeal in hand, you’ve seen some responses, and your second ask is on its way out the door, if not in the mail already. ‘Tis the season to show your appreciation to your leading donors, your most loyal donors, your new donors, and the highly-connected, influential donors who, if you give them a warm, authentic experience when you thank them, are likely to share that with people in their network, which lifts up your organization.

Select five to eight people to call today. When you thank them, speak from your heart. Get to your point while making a personal connection. Most people appreciate a short call where it’s easy for them to hop off the phone after a couple of minutes. Should you catch someone who wants to chat, that gives you an opportunity to listen to what’s going with them, so welcome that bonding experience. Some of us are hungry for connection these days. Use your active listening skills.

For the people you don’t catch by phone, you can leave a message, or not – in my personal opinion, voice mail messages are less and less popular with people, so use your judgement. If you do leave a message it should be super short, with a warm, bright tone, and it should not include any details about the gift, in case someone else picks up the message. If you choose not to leave a message, dash off a quick note. One sentence or two will do. Pop notes in tomorrow’s mail and you’re set for the week!

Ask … Without Asking

Welcome to Week 40! Your follow-up appeal is getting out the door three weeks after the first request in your fall-to-year-end series. Now it’s time to identify a suitable vehicle for a soft ask – that is, asking without asking: information that you send to prospects and donors who haven’t renewed yet, with a reply device or link but no “please consider a gift.” This reminder that should land three to four weeks after your second direct appeal for a gift. The goal is to boost response, nudging people who are thinking about giving to make the decision and execute.

Annual reports serve this purpose, yet for many smaller organizations the typical annual report is too expensive to design, print, and mail. And — I don’t think you need it. Instead, take a simpler approach that helps your supporters better understand your organization. Since it is common for nonprofits to have a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year, we’re working with that schedule in this yearlong plan. How does that fit in regarding asking for charitable gifts in the fall?

You send two messages when you share your financial data: what you share demonstrates how transparent you are willing to be, and when you share it reflects on how well-organized you are. Because I am constantly digging into 990s for benchmarking profiles, I see plenty of organizations that get one or two extensions every year before filing. If you can get a 990 done every 12 months, you can do it without extensions if you plan ahead, and you’ll show your supporters that you’re on top of your fiscal processes.

Here’s an ideal schedule: when your year closes June 30, pull your numbers together over the next six weeks. You’ll delight your accountant by keeping them busy when it’s slow otherwise. Plan for your annual audit, if required, in mid-September so you’ll be past it when you are into peak fundraising season. This puts you on track to have final figures in early October, from which you can create an annual report.

Except you don’t need a typical annual report –the big, beautiful magazine with letters from leaders and spotlights on program, pages of donor listings and photos throughout. Scale it way down and communicate directly, with focus, to your donors.

After decades of working with Boards and donors, I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of supporters are not proficient in reading financial statements. There’s nothing wrong with publishing the numbers from the accountant, but could you be missing an opportunity to simplify and interpret them so you can tell your story in a way that reaches your donors?

Especially this year, you have an opening to show what’s really happening to your organization fiscally. I encourage you to pull together a handful of people and talk about the story that your financial numbers tell, then boil that down into a couple of paragraphs that express what stayed the same in 2020 (if anything), what changed, what changes made the most difference, and what your action plan is going forward. State what kind of help will make the greatest impact. Show your resourcefulness, resilience, and clear-eyed optimism.

All you need is a pair of pie charts showing relevant categories of revenue and expenses, plus your narrative. If you have the space to drop in a spotlight on your current work, add that to vary the content. There is no direct request for support in this piece. Format can be an e-newsletter or, if you’re printing, try an oversized postcard with the link to make a gift, or lay it out as a trifold brochure and enclose a reply envelope. To keep the ask subtle, and production simpler, the only dynamic information is the mailing face. Everything else is informational.

Use your One Hour this week to envision when you can generate a document like this (you might be putting some tasks on your 2021 calendar, I get that). Make a plan and a date for going over your organization’s annual figures and decide who you want around the table to collaborate on the interpretation and messaging.

If this isn’t in the cards for your organization this year, plan a brief message to supporters that shares some insight into what is happening with your organization now, without making a direct ask – since you’re going to get back to doing that later next month. For this year, I’d encourage you to get that out the door the last full week of October. Because of the election, the first half of November could be an unpredictable time to connect with donors.