Annual Campaigns

It’s annual report season — and awards season! What better time to get inspired by nonprofits that are publishing exemplary online annual reports? These organizations show the powerful results you can get when you revamp your annual report process. Here are some noteworthy online annual reports in five categories:

• Best Donation Generator — charity: water
• Best Messengers — Girls Inc.
• Best Year's Highlights — Kiva
• Best Bold Move to Digital — Salvation Army
• Best E-Book — Michael J. Fox Foundation

The year was 2003, and I was insanely busy in my second position in nonprofit fundraising, grant writer for a regional organization serving women and children. Although I’d been hired only weeks earlier to develop cultivation and solicitation strategies for corporate and foundation prospects, already I’d been called off task any number of times.

And now I was given the assignment of creating my first annual report.

Kivi Leroux Miller, president of Nonprofit Marketing Guide and member of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board; Sarah Durham, president of Big Duck; Alia McKee, principal at Sea Change Strategies; and Laurence Pagnoni, chairman of LAPA Fundraising and author of "The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution," share some last-minute year-end steps to take now.

For nonprofits, the end of the year is often a time for reflecting on what worked and what didn’t during the previous year, and laying plans for the year to come. It’s vitally important that our organizations make plans that not only inspire, but that also lay out an effective fundraising strategy for our teams to follow.

Whether you’re writing a whole new fundraising plan for the coming year or simply setting up some basic goals for the next 12 months, here are four quick tips for better and more effective development planning.

Ted Hart speaks with CFRE and fundraising author Kay Sprinkel Grace about fundraising success plans for the new year on his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

Attention fundraisers: You have four weeks to reach your fundraising goals, meet those membership objectives and secure financial commitments for next year. Now, before you shut off your computer to go running through the office screaming the sky is falling, let me share with you some good news.

You have enough time for fundraising. You can do this. As long as you get out of your own way.

Here are some tips for staying focused and avoiding the year-end fundraising overwhelm.

In working with dozens of nonprofit organizations on year-end giving programs, I have found that there are five basic rules that must guide your strategy if you want to steadily increase year-end fundraising each and every year at your charity: 1. Make sure your message is consistent. 2. Be mission-focused, not gimmicky. 3. Make multichannel asks. 4. Cultivate year-round in each of those channels. 5. Run year-end giving like a campaign.

I’m thinking a lot about annual reports right now. Are you? All nonprofit annual reports, regardless of size, length or format, should include these five essential elements: 1. accomplishments, not activities; 2. real people telling the story; 3. the financials; 4. ample thanks; 5. a call to action.

As your nonprofit prepares for a holiday fundraising campaign, hundreds of other charities are doing the same.

Here are six fundamentals of a smashing fundraising campaign: 1. Figure out your target audience. 2. One size does not fit all. 3. Craft your messages and tailor them keeping your audience in mind. 4. Determine who is making your case — not whom the actual ask is coming from (though that matters a lot too), but whose story are you telling? 5. Create an overarching "identity" for your campaign. 6. Map out your campaign on a timeline.