The dog days of Summer are still in full swing but the leaves will soon fall and the holiday season will be here before you know it. The holidays just aren’t a boom time for retail. They are the most lucrative time of the year for nonprofits nationwide. Donorbox reports that, “November (46.2%) and December (30.8%) are the most popular months for making year-end asks. In addition to that, 28% of nonprofits raise between 26 – 50% of their annual funds from their year-end ask.” In order to make the absolute most of your year-end asks you and your team need to start your planning now. In this blog we’ll provide you with a month-by-month checklist that will take you from campaign conception all the way up through the New Year and your ‘thank you’ correspondence.

September - Kicking off your campaign

Establish Scope

You can’t begin a holiday campaign, or any campaign, without establishing your goals and expectations. In order to determine what ‘success’ in 2024 looks like you need to review previous years and asks. Every nonprofit wants to ‘do better than last year’ but what does that mean in dollars and cents? Review your records for end-of-year asks going back at least 4 years (post covid is a different world than pre-covid, so 2020 is a great place to start). Did your end-of-year push last year perform as expected? Was it underwhelming? Review previous years and take a look at your current standing as of today. Ask yourself this, ‘if 2024’s end of year ask performs comparably to 2022 and 2023 will we meet our goals?’ - the answer to this question will help determine the scope of your 2024 campaign. 

Party Planning Committee

Does your nonprofit host an annual holiday party? If not, then perhaps this is the year you want to begin a new annual tradition. 4 months is ample time to plan your holiday party, even if Angela is the head of your party planning committee. First things first, you need a place to host it. If you normally use a 3rd party location then reach out to them and book the venue. If you’re going to host it at your own facilities you can save yourself a step and some money, but go ahead to pencil in that date internally and begin reaching out to caterers and suppliers. Secure their services now for your big day so you’re scrambling, or at the bottom of their list come December. 

You’ll need to include party information and invites in to your campaign messaging, so get your party details in order before giving your marketing team their direction for holiday messaging. Speaking of which…

Messaging & Content Calendar

Now that you have determined the scope of your holiday efforts its time to decide on your messaging, its cadence and methods of delivery (email, social posts & physical mailers). Create a content calendar for the months of November, December and January (you’ll need to send ‘thank yous and SWAG in the new year). Be mindful of major holidays like Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. We also recommend holding off on sending any holiday-related fundraising messages until AFTER Halloween. Let your donors handle one major holiday season at a time. You don’t want to overwhelm them or seem too pushy. 

Now that you have a Content Calendar established, it's time to work on your messaging. Kick off your messaging meeting by asking these questions:

• What do you want to say to your donors? 
• Do you have any new initiatives, partners or accomplishments you want to tout/make your focal point?
• Do you want to reuse/tweak your messaging from previous years?
• Or do you need to start fresh?

If you want to start fresh then you have a lot of brainstorming to do. If you’re just tweaking pre-existing campaigns then you have less of a lift. Either way, now that you have determined the scope of your campaign it’s time to activate your marketing and development teams and have them start crafting your 2024 Holiday Campaign.

SWAG

If you offer trinkets and gifts to your donors (or party attendees) we recommend putting in that order as early in the process as possible. Get in touch with your suppliers and partners and get your order in. If you don’t already have a reliable supplier then all the more reason to begin this process as you’ll need to find one. You may have different tiers of gifts for varying levels of donor so you’ll need to establish that hierarchy and get those items ordered. Once again, you don’t want to be on the eve of your party and still be waiting from a SWAG delivery from Santa. Get these items ordered and get them in-house. 

October - Putting the Campaign Together

Adopting

Build your Email List
Your campaign is in development but who are you going to send it to? It’s time to dive in to Salesforce or your chosen CRM and segment your audiences. For example, the guests you invite to your holiday party are more than likely local, while your donor base may be nationwide. Determine who should receive your holiday donation emails and get those contacts into their own lists. If you haven’t cleaned your email list recently then it may be time to clean it up - removing any inactive accounts and confirming that any new contacts you’ve collected are active and searchable.

Content
You have now determined the scope of your holiday campaign and answered the all important questions of ‘who is receiving what message?’ and ‘when are they receiving it?’ Now its time to craft the content itself. Task your marketing team with writing the emails, writing the social media copy, creating any new imagery and building the emails themselves.

An often overlooked aspect of the campaign is the Landing Page. The place you’re going to direct all of your donors to collect their donations. This page will be the destination URL for your emails and social media posts. If you have a functioning and clean landing page from previous years then you can always reuse it, albeit with updated copy and imagery to reflect your new 2024 campaign. Confirm that your landing page and its links are still active and can accurately and reliably collect donations. If you’re in need of a new landing page or just a fresh start, we recommend using Salesforce’s Philanthropy Cloud.

Donation Button
You’ve got a great campaign in development and your target audience has been identified, but what about everyone not in your followers or on your email list? The good work you do is sure to make its way to the newsfeed of citizens who aren’t completely familiar with you and you want to make donating as easy on them as possible, especially if they’re in the giving spirit. Add a button to your website’s home page encouraging visitors to donate. Connect it to the same backend service that collects donations via your landing page. If you don’t already have this item activated on your social channels then now is the time to get this live and active.

Test your Emails
Once your marketing team has your assets created and the emails built into Salesforce, or whatever your current email platform may be, it's time to make sure they work. Run the same internal tests you would for any email campaign and confirm that the emails are mobile responsive, the images are displaying and the email itself is mobile responsive. Complete your testing in October so that you can launch your holiday campaign starting November 1st.

November - Launch Your Holiday Campaign

Sending & Posting

Is the current date after Halloween? Does the month you are currently in start with an N? Then you can start sending your first emails and posting your first social media content. DO NOT start sending your holiday donation promotions until after Halloween. Sending holiday emails before Halloween is no different than when Target or Home Depot starts putting up Holiday decorations in September - people don’t like it, they simply aren’t ‘there’ mentally yet. So don’t be that. You’ll have plenty of time in November and December to promote and connect. 

Monitor Your Inbox & Notifications

Keep an extra eye on your inbox and social channels. The general public is in the giving mood this time of year. They want to give. But sometimes they have questions, concerns or simple connectivity issues and you don’t want their outreach to go unanswered. Ignore their replies and they’ll simply find another nonprofit - maybe cross country, maybe across town - to donate. Don’t leave them hanging and don’t leave donation money on the table. 

Pick up a phone. 

We know, in 2024 the hardest thing to do is talk on the phone. We all want our communication to be digital - either via text or email - so we can vet and possibly ignore it. But the personal touch hasn’t lost its place for nonprofits. Reach out directly to your biggest donors. Remind them that it’s ‘that time of year again.’ Pull up their donor and interaction history on Salesforce. Remind them of previous donations they’ve made, be prepared to discuss your success this year as well as your goals for next year - let them know how important a role they play in this continued success. Remember: you’re not cold calling, you’re not a telemarketer. You are a trusted nonprofit who they have donated to generously in the past. They won’t be upset to hear from you. A well timed call and potentially, a follow up call will not drive them away. 

December - Finish Strong

Party Time!

Host your holiday party! It’s time to celebrate the success you have accomplished this year with an eye on the future. This party is also a great opportunity to fundraise, don’t forget that! Make the most of it - have fun, connect with your donors, and build your community all at once. Just take it easy on the egg nogg. 

The rest of your December to-do list is a continuation of November:

• Continue your email and social campaigns
• Continue to reach out directly to your big time donors (phone calls and direct emails, not just the mass-sends)
• If you have the time, think about updating your December messaging to reflect your current status in relation to your goals. 
  • EX: We’re only $$$$ away from reaching our goal for 2024! Can you put us over the top today!?!?

January - Wrap it Up

You made it! Hopefully your year-end holiday season ask went great and your finances are looking good going into the new year. Now you just need to put a bow on it before moving on to new challenges. 

The only major item left in this campaign is to send your Thank you’s and SWAG. If you have donors that you owe promotional material to, get that packaged and sent their way. Or, send them notifications that they have items to pick up from your office. After that, send out your ‘thank you’ emails and post your ‘thank you’ socials. Take a moment to include some stats about the success of your campaign, how much you eclipsed your goals and what you have planned for the coming year.