Looking Ahead to Year-End 2014

2. Check and double-check your acknowledgment program.
Every gift you received, every donor you have is critical to the next step of asking for more. We can’t close the gap without our donors on board to help us — and an unacknowledged gift does not make it any easier.

3. What is your strongest message? What do your donors respond to better than other offers you have?
Ask your donors to support the things they care about the most (excluding restricted giving). You may need to throw out appeal topics for the rest of the year and get back to basics. It could be your donors sent you a message last fall about the things you were asking them to support. Did you listen?

4. Call your donors.
Put your most phone-responsive donors on with your best fundraisers/telemarketing professionals. Listen to what your donors say when they are asked to support your cause. Participate in more call monitoring than you ever have, pay close attention to what you hear and compare these comments to what you have heard in previous campaigns. Are your donors telling you something about the relationship you have or thought you had with them? Did they not give during year-end because you may have been doing something wrong? Don’t deny the truth if you hear it — fix it.

5. What new donors did you acquire, and what lapsed donors did you reinstate?
Is your new-donor or newly reinstated donor strategy in place, and how is it working? Have you started inviting new donors to become monthly givers? Don’t forget about these new folks when you are concentrating on “closing the gap.” You worked hard to get them, and you need them now more than ever.

If you have things that worked or things that didn’t during this past year-end, I would love to share them in future columns with our readers. The more we learn from each other, the more dancing and singing we will do in 2015!