How is year end fundraising like “The Nutcracker?”

I mean, beyond the obvious that they are both major productions that happen in December…?

Before I was a fundraiser, I trained to be a ballerina. And the turning of July into August meant one thing back then: Nutcracker rehearsals were starting.

I often credit my intensive dance training for much of my success as a fundraiser—the stick-to-it attitude, the self-discipline, the hunger to get it right. And also, the itch to start thinking about December in July…

Which is probably why I’ve done really well with year-end campaigns. Come July, the Sugar Plum Fairy song starts playing in my head, and I know it’s time to start thinking about my year end fundraising campaign.

Maybe you’re thinking Dang, Kelly, that’s way too early to be thinking about year-end.

I get it. It’s the same reaction I had yesterday when I got my first email about Nutcracker rehearsals from my daughter’s dance studio director. But if you want to put on a good show, you have to take the time to produce a great show.

And the same goes for year end fundraising. 

I don’t fault anyone for wanting to leave year end campaigns for…well…the very end of the year. But when you do that, you end up making the campaign only about soliciting, and that’s a big problem.

And you’ll understand why if you understand the FIT Framework for Fundraising Sustainability. We view solicitation as the middle step in a good donor program, so if you wait until November (as many orgs do) to start thinking about it, you’re probably just thinking about year end fundraising in the context of solicitation.

But you need to think about the full framework. So let’s workshop it out in this blog post.

STEP 1: Envision your ideal donor

The first step in the FIT Framework is your donor persona. Most nonprofits target “everyone,” but when you talk to “everyone,” you’re actually talking to no one. And “everyone” isn’t going to fall in love with your organization. 

Look, I already told you that I’m a former ballet dancer. You can tell me all day long how beneficial sports are for kids–and intellectually, I get it. Teamwork, sportsmanship; it all sounds great. But if you’re raising money for a nonprofit that centers around sports, I’m just not your target audience (sorry, you’re doing great work…keep it up! I’d love to help you find your perfect not-me donor!). But if you’re an arts organization–I’m your gal! Hit me up! (Double points if you work in arts and disability or arts and advocacy…legit, shoot me an email and tell me about your organization, I want to know you!)

It’s not that the work that sports nonprofits do isn’t important and wonderful and impactful, but it just doesn’t speak to me in the way that arts missions do. AND THAT’S OKAY! My brother-in-law is a die-hard sports fan…he’s got you. :) If you’re an arts organization, don’t bother with him.

See what I’m saying? We lose a lot of time and impact trying to target everyone instead of focusing on the people most likely to resonate with and back our cause. Part of why we feel exhausted all the time as nonprofit pros is we buy into the myth that we can or should talk to everyone and be everywhere.

I’m giving you permission to not be everywhere. Cut back. Slow down!

Here’s how you do it: Think about your mission. Think about yourself, your fellow staff members, your fellow volunteers. What is it about you that makes you resonate with your mission? 

And I’m not talking demographics like age, gender identity, kids/no kids. 

Who are your donors, deep down in their hearts?

STEP TWO: Where can you find your ideal donor?

Once again, when you’re talking to everyone, your nonprofit is generally under the impression that you have to be doing it everywhere: every social media platform, Google Ads, email, website, and on, and on…it’s making my head spin.

But let’s think about it this way. If I handed you a megaphone and told you to go shout your mission statement on any corner you want in NYC…where would you go?

90% of people I ask this question to say “Wall Street” cuz that’s where the rich people are. And I say, that’s the wrong answer. Sure, rich people likely have plenty of disposable income…but that’s all you know about them. But in fact, your mission might not resonate with most of them. If I was an arts organization, I’d grab that megaphone and go stand outside of the Met or Lincoln Center…there I’m going to find way more people who are going to resonate with my mission. 

See what I did there? I just increased my “yes” rate by thinking a bit more about WHERE my people are. 

What we’re doing here is building efficiency into your fundraising program. You don’t have to be everywhere, and that should feel like really, really good news! You just have to be in the right places…but you won’t know where that is until you do Step One.

STEP THREE: Get them to raise their hand, not give (yet!)

So you know where your ideal donor is hanging out. What are you gonna do?

EVERYONE ELSE: Solicit them!

ME: WRONG!

If a donor journey is a relationship, indulge me this metaphor. Let’s say you’re looking for someone to spend the rest of your life with. You’ve thought long and hard about what you want in a life partner. You have decided this is someone you can meet via a local speed dating session for environmentally conscious singles. So you go to said speed dating session, and you propose to the first person you’re matched up with (cuz hey, they’re your target life partner, right?)

What do they do? Probably run screaming from the room because you just asked for a heck of a lot of commitment without bothering to find out a thing about them.

That’s what we do when we solicit people at first sight! Sure, some give (which is why guilt and donor gifts “supposedly” work), but most won’t. Most will run screaming from the room.

What if instead you asked for their email address? What if instead, you provided them with some support or storytelling so they could get to know you? What if you ask them what they care about in the world?

Now let’s turn this to social media. I know lots of nonprofits that post social media posts asking for gifts and get squat. So frustrating! 

What I work with my clients on doing is asking for email addresses based on something we can provide to the donor:

• “Sign up for our email list today because next week we’ll be sharing samples of our student’s musical compositions.” 

• “Next week, we’ll be announcing our program graduate’s job placements…find out more by signing up for our email blast!”

• “Is your family looking for more ways to get off screens and into real life, sign up for our special guide to screen-free fun!” 

What can you do to get an email, not a gift? 

Think about who your donor is, where they are hanging out, and how you’ll get them to say “hey, I’d like to learn more…here’s my email address.”

STEP FOUR: Getting to know you…getting to know all about you…

Now that we have that email address, what can we do to get our potential donor to know more about us and to learn more about them?

That’s right, we are now going to have a conversation with our prospective donors! 

Take a quick look at your donor communications. Are you having a dialogue with your donors or a monologue at your donors?

A dialogue is a conversation that invites feedback in the form of email replies, comments on social posts, answers on surveys, participation in virtual, in-person, or hybrid events (not fundraising events, learning events). 

One of my clients has a quarterly “Impact Tour” where they take anyone who is interested on a site visit of partner companies who employ their program participants. It’s their number one way of getting folks from “gave email address” to a gift. Why? Because they invite folks in to see what they do, ask questions, and understand the impact of the gift they are about to get asked for.

If you’re not the type of organization that can host a site visit–like one of my clients–you can host Zoom impact hours like another client of mine, where donors get to chat with the Executive Director and some of her staff to learn about the latest in their program. Or–like one program I ran–you can have a Zoom call with policy advocacy leaders to talk about the latest strategy your organization is engaged in and how prospective donors can engage in your advocacy process.

And this isn’t just for 1:1 communication. For every broadcast post you put on social media, could you try posting two that ask for engagement? 

I worked with an arthouse cinema that used to only post the movies and events they were hosting. Then we started playing with things like:

• On mother’s day, asking our audiences their favorite movie to watch with their mom or other maternal figure in their life.

• Asking our audience what movies they’d like to see in the upcoming summer kid’s movie festival.

• Posting requests for reviews of a movie the cinema had recently screened.

And the more the audience saw the organization was listening, the more they engaged. (And then we ran a capital campaign that raised the funding goal in half the time we’d planned for the campaign!)

But too often in nonprofit communications, we monologue. We broadcast out our updates, and invite no engagement back. Take a look at your communications and see how you’re doing on the monologue to dialogue ratio.

STEP FIVE: Build your solicitation on a logical progression of the prior steps

Now that we’ve done steps 1-4, think about how you might solicit these folks you’ve brought along this journey. If you’ve been ramping up social media engagement, make your asks there. If you’ve taken them offline by inviting them to an open house, how might you invite them to donate in the physical world (mailed appeal and telephone call combo is what I recommend here)?

Based on who you’ve brought along this journey (and you’ll know oodles more about them if you did the dialogue part correctly), what’s the logical next step? It’s to support your organization, but you need to make sure the ask is in line with the tone, methods, and intention that these other steps have built up to.

Now back time that whole process…

If you need to have your solicitation ready in mid-November (which is when I recommend starting year end campaigns), you need to have all the materials ready for just step five by early November. 

Which means you need to be engaging your audience back in September and October to really get a feel for who is in that audience.

Which means you need to have them raise their hand to join your lists in August.

Which means…yup…you need to think this through this week. 

Need help with that? We’ve got you! Schedule a discovery call today to see if we can bake up a better fundraising recipe for your nonprofit so this year’s bake can rise to new heights!

(Cue Sugar Plum Fairy music…)