Your 7-Part Guide to a Relaxing Holiday Giving Season

If all goes according to plan, that will be you during the month of December. 👆🏼

Imagine, being able to relax with your family during the holidays, without the stress of a year-end giving campaign… it’s possible!

We believe that gratitude is key for a successful holiday giving season. And that’s all you need to focus on for the entire month of December: showing your supporters how much you appreciate them. 

If you start planning early (in August/September), all of your annual appeal messaging, emails, and letters will be approved and ready to go well before the holidays — and you can breathe easy. Plus, if you schedule everything in advance and set it up to go out on an automatic schedule for delivery, you can really sit back and relax.

With our plan for the holiday giving season, all you’ll need to do at the end of the year is tell your donors how much you love them. 

GIF courtesy of our client, the BlinkNow Foundation, an organization changing the world by empowering Nepal’s children.

Our Philosophy for Success

We believe it’s important to say “thank you” to your donors again and again and again, even (and especially!) when you’re asking them for money. 

Cultivating your donors during the year-end giving season helps you raise more money from them (“cultivating” = fancy word for showing gratitude and building a relationship).

When we talk about showing gratitude to donors, we don’t mean waiting for them to give to your annual appeal and then showering them with thanks (although that’s important, too). We mean saying thank you before they’ve given to your annual appeal. We’re talking about showing your gratitude at the same time that you’re making your asks. That is the central component of our annual appeal philosophy.

If you follow this plan, you’ll stand out from the rest. The average donor is inundated with requests to give during the holiday season, but very few organizations use this time to cultivate their donors. 

Your 7-Part Guide for Year-End Giving Success

Steps 1-3 are focused on the asks you’ll be making. In fundraising, we call these solicitations (“solicitation” = another fancy word for asking for the donations your organization needs to thrive).

Step 1: Email Campaign

This is where the magic happens! Email will be your main money-maker. This is where you’ll create email content for your Giving Tuesday and year-end campaign to encourage your supporters to give, and send it during the times studies show are most effective.

Step 2: Social Media Campaign

This will mirror what you’re doing over email, with two differences: you’ll post more frequently than you email, and you’ll incorporate going live on social media. You can also run ads to increase your reach.

Step 3: Direct Mail Campaign

This form of solicitation is alive and well! Keep in mind that it does require advance planning with the printing house and applying for a nonprofit mailing rate with USPS.

Don’t lean so hard on solicitation that you forget about cultivation! Gratitude messages are just as important as the “ask” messages. Steps 4-7 are focused on gratitude. 

Step 4: Welcome Journeys

Make sure your donors are being thanked and warmly welcomed to your organization. If you already have a welcome journey in place, update it! If you're new to this concept, you’ll want to start with at least one message going out to donors in addition to their automatic donation receipt.

5. Phone Calls

You want your supporters to hear how grateful you are, in your own voice. If you don’t have time to make individual calls, you can use SlyBroadcast to send pre-recorded voicemail messages.

6. Handwritten Cards

We all love receiving cards in the mail. These will not contain any solicitation; they will be focused on gratitude only. If writing these feels overwhelming, consider recruiting volunteers to help.

7. Personalized Videos

Record personalized donor videos in a way that’s easy to manage. We recommend using ThankView. It allows you to easily request videos from any team member (or program participant), anywhere in the world. The video can then be linked in an email to your donor. This is a paid service, but an important part of your budget.

Ready to Get Started?

Download our Guide to a Successful Holiday Giving Season, which includes a detailed timeline and checklist to ensure your year-end campaign is right on track.

Want to talk to us about the steps you plan on taking for this year’s giving season? Let’s chat! We offer Free Office Hours to all nonprofits and purpose-driven organizations. Pick a time to sit down with our digital marketing experts for one hour, free of charge.