Tag Archives: LYBUNTS/PYBUNTS

It’s Nonprofit Fundraising Crunch Time – 17 Ideas You Can Still Do This Year

Director of Individual Giving - Temple Emanu-El
It’s Nonprofit Fundraising Crunch Time Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The next 7+ weeks may make up 30 to 40% of your annual revenue. Here are ideas to help this fundraising crunch time!

#GivingTuesday There are many ways to encourage giving on this day – it is the unofficial start of the giving season so don’t let it pass you by.

  • Use social media to create a campaign
  • Create a match to encourage giving
  • Use it to thank donors who have already given this year
  • Highlight impact
  • Find more ideas by clicking here or Googling #GivingTuesday ideas 2021

Make calls (From you, your board, or your development committee)

  • Call LYBUNTS who gave last year above a certain level
  • Make thank you calls. It’s never too early to start stewardship for next year

Send emails (From you, your Executive Director, CEO or board chair)

  • Solicitations
    • We are all busy during fundraising crunch time but removing donors each time is best practice. If you can’t be consistent about updates (most CRMs will help), acknowledge that if they have already given, it might not have been recorded in the system yet.
  • Updates on the organization
    • Send these to everyone – especially those who gave earlier in the year. This will help with stewardship and offer another way to donate this year (always include a way to give in any email to your list).
  • Updates on giving this year
    • List your fundraising goal.
    • List the number of days until you reach the end of your match.
    • List their previous gifts and what you hope they will give this year.
    • List anything such as what a gift of various amounts will mean or anything you think will encourage someone to hit that donate button.
  • Send reminders
    • Many people wait until the last minute to give. Don’t hold it against them – make it easy for them
  • Send Thank you videos. What you do now will impact how your donors will feel in December.

Send letters

  • You can still squeeze in 2 letters by the end of year. But start planning today.
  • Tip: Use all the ones you are receiving as a template for what you like, what you don’t like, and what yours should look like.

Fundraising crunch time will be busy, but done correctly, it can boost your results significantly.

Assessing Your Nonprofit’s Donors and Prospects: Annual Fund Segmentation Strategies

Annual fund segmentationSolicitation strategies start with assessing the current situation. Do you treat all your prospects and donors the same? Should you?

Now, more than ever, you should have a development plan for all prospects and a stewardship plan for all donors.

But, you should not plan on having the executive director “meet” with every donor. How can a nonprofit engage each prospect and donor when there are thousands? Annual fund segmentation.

Start annual fund segmentation by considering how they give.

  • Are they a Prospect or Donor
  • If a donor, are they
    • Current
    • Once-a-year Donor
    • Monthly Donor
    • Major donor
    • mid-level donor
    • mid-level donor you are trying to upgrade
    • 10-year donor
    • 25+ year donor
    • first time donor
    • LYBUNT
    • PYBUNT
    • Someone who gave to a
      • specific event
      • end-of-year mail or email campaign
      • other mail or email campaigns
      • sponsorship
      • special campaign donor
      • restricted gift donor
      • peer-to-peer campaign on behalf of a friend
      • also a volunteer
    • If a prospect or a donor, are they also a
      • Recent graduate or services beneficiary
      • 10-year alumnus\a
      • 25-year alumnus\a

Additional key points to keep in mind include:

  1. It costs 4.5 times as much for the nonprofit to find a new donor than retain one
  2. Donors don’t usually give a major gift in the first year they give to a nonprofit. Cultivation and stewardship over years (3-5 years minimum) is what will get you to the point you can ask for a major gift. *This assumes they have the capacity and had been stewarded properly during the time since they made their first gift.
  3. When you start accounting for lifetime giving, someone who gave $50/year for 20 years gave $1,000 to your nonprofit. How would you treat someone who gave $1,000?
  4. Break it down specifically for your organization. Should:
  • major donors get more personalized interaction than other donors?
  • monthly donors get a different appeal than once-a-year donors?
  • PYBUNTS or LYBUNTS get the same letter as new prospects?
  • members get the same email as non-members?
  • alumni get same event invitation as prospects?
  • parents get the same Facebook post as the students?
  • ____ get the same ____ as _____ (fill this in for your nonprofit)

Each organization will have its own set of segmentations.

And contrary to popular belief, segmentation was not created to give you more work.  Instead, it gives you more directed work. And a path to raising more money (which is the point, isn’t it?)

It may seem easier to send the same fundraising letter to the 1000+ people on your mailing list and move on.  But what are you moving on to? If you rely on your annual fund to support your organization, this must be a priority for your development team. Even if it is a team of one.