Happy New Year

It’s Week 52 – the final entry in this yearlong project. The last hour that you have to put toward your fundraising foundation, annual giving, happens this week. You have your end-of-year appeal messaging all in place, with the final asks hitting your social media pages and donors’ email accounts on Thursday.

The greatest return on your time now is to refresh your list of donors who gave in 2019 but not yet in 2020. Include gift dates in your report; people who gave at the very end of 2019 may well be planning to give to your organization this week. Use your time strategically to call people who gave earlier in 2019. Your cause may have slipped off their radar, or they may think they already renewed. Make it a friendly call with a program update – don’t lead with the ask. If the donor doesn’t mention that a gift is coming, try a message like, “I hope we can count on your support again this year, as we close out 2020.” You should be able to close the conversation on a high note and it’s likely the next best move is to send a quick email thank-you with the link to your online giving page.

Finish strong and enjoy a quiet week to begin the New Year!

Charge That Phone: It’s Call Time​

Congratulations to you! You’ve been climbing Annual Giving Mountain for 50 weeks straight; the summit is in sight. Pause for a moment where you are, breathe, and look back to see how far you’ve come.

Today is a new moon, a perfect time to focus on productivity as you head into the last fortnight of the year. December is when you harvest what you have planned, prepared, and produced all year. There is nothing new to learn right now, just work to be done. This week’s assignment is simple:

Call donors.

That’s it. That’s the post. Love and light to you as you move through this important week.

It’s Showtime for Annual Giving​

Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, and the first day of the busiest giving month of the year. Dress rehearsal is finished, the opening acts are done, and you’re on stage live for a month, closing gifts. Welcome to Week 48!

Your time this week is best invested in enhancing the solicitations you have planned. December is when your warm, personal touch goes the farthest because individuals – and many small businesses – are determining what they have available to give to charity. Add notes, make calls, and ask others to do the same.

Who should be at the top of your list? Renewals, of course, and within that pool, start with the people who have the greatest lifetime giving to your organization. Keep that inner circle feeling sure that they are appreciated.

You already know how to tell your story to engage your donors, so as you plan your talking points, I want to give you something extra — tax tips to keep in your back pocket and pull out when you see an opportunity to encourage a donor to make a gift decision. While tax incentives don’t drive people’s emotional impetus to make charitable gifts, it is worth understanding who is most likely to enjoy a tax advantage from giving so you can weave tax benefits into your conversation with certain people.

Schedule A filers generally receive a tax break for giving more to charity. Who might be in that group?

• Single or Married Filing Separately taxpayers – they only have to clear $12,400 in deductions to make a Schedule A worth filing
• Workers paying high local income taxes that count toward their SALT deduction (State And Local Taxes are generally capped at $10,000)
• Homeowners with a mortgage, especially if they bought or refinanced in 2020
• Owners of a first or second home with local property taxes (counts toward SALT)
• Filers paying down student debt can deduct up to $2,500 on qualified loans
• Work-from-home folks who incurred significant home office expenses in 2020

What about people taking the standard deduction? Married filers with one home are often better off choosing the $24,800 deduction, so you can mention that 2020 rules allow an above-the-line adjustment to income of up to $300 for charitable contributions. You can share that helpful tip to your donors who are likely to give in that range to your organization.

Be aware that the CARES Act for coronavirus relief could mean reduced giving this year from some of your older donors. As part of CARES, the IRS waived Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) for 2020, so your donors who are over 70.5 years of age with IRAs and similar retirement plans don’t have a tax incentive to give in order to satisfy their RMD. Ask for their support, but if they normally make their charitable gifts from assets in their qualified plans, be prepared to be gracious if there is a dip in their giving this year.

You can share tips more broadly if you like. It’s my opinion that tax tips cool off a warm solicitation, so offer that information in a sidebar on your e-newsletter and in social media posts rather than a mission-focused ask.

Have a great week and a happy Giving Tuesday!

Should You Drive Year-End Giving With A Draft Donor List?

Week 47 is a short one, so this week’s task is considering rather than producing. Today’s image is a dreamy view of some woods, which is a good setting for thinking things over.

One way to push lapsed donors to give when the deadline is looming is to send them a draft of your donor honor roll, year to date. This gambit has to fit with the culture of your particular organization, so use your One Hour to consider this option and decide if you want to use it.

When is this tactic effective? If:

• Donors recognize one another’s names
• They are somewhat competitive, and
• They enjoy seeing their names listed.

Whether you list donors by dollar ranges or alphabetically in one big list is another choice to make. In my experience with a variety of organizational cultures, I would advise against this if you have a critical mass of anonymous donors and/or historically your organization has not publicly listed its supporters. That can indicate that your donors value their privacy and like to see themselves as humble, egalitarian, or modest. If you are considering this tactic, definitely talk it over first with a handful of people who represent your donor population.

Sharing a draft donor listing was effective in a hospital setting where the medical staff had its own donor section. It worked like this:

A month before the fiscal year closed, a memo went to the entire medical staff. It was intentionally impersonal, without dynamic information, so everyone received the same thing. The message was “please check to see that your name is listed correctly” and the list of those who had given year to date, other than any who were anonymous, was enclosed. People who thought they had already given called the office and had a conversation with a kind and cheerful staff member who told them when they had last sent a gift, so the donors renewed in order to appear on the final list.

If this is right for you, it is simple to generate and will help to bring in both renewals and first-time gifts from people who are influenced by seeing their friends and colleagues giving. The two things to make sure you get right are:

Taking care to omit listing anonymous donors, and

Properly preparing the person who will be responding to phone calls and emails.

Donors who reach out to have a conversation are creating an opportunity for you to build the relationships you have with them; ensure that they are handled with sensitivity and respect.