Start the Year Strong
Follow up, so your donors can follow through. Many organizations don’t follow up out of fear that donors will get mad. If the donor is a transaction and your solicitation reflects that, you bet, they will get mad, not because you followed up, but because you are just resending a transactional appeal to them. On the other hand, if you engage them as a relationship that matters, you engage them personally and you share an opportunity to make a difference. That is about building relationships, not getting checks.
Year-End Giving
December is our big push in the nonprofit sector for donor engagement and giving. A while back I shared a few of the statistics below, but I wanted to pull them back out as a reminder. Forty percent of charitable donations are typically being made in December.