Congratulations, you have just made it through another year end giving cycle. I hope you are rested and ready to go for the new year.
#1 How did your year-end giving plans perform?
Let’s start with Giving Tuesday.
What do you think you did well?
What would you like to do more of next year?
WRITE IT DOWN.
How did you move from Giving Tuesday to a successful year-end campaign?
What platform got the most engagement?
What social media post got the most engagement?
Which emails received the highest open rate?
Which emails received the highest click rate?
What would you like to do more of next year?
WRITE IT DOWN
Results.
This information should be easily pulled from your CRM
How much did you raise each month (October-December) in 2022
How much did you raise each month (October-December) in 2023
Then, break it down by month.
Did something happen to skew one of the years?
Did you cancel an event - or start a new one?
Was there something episodic that would impact engagement? Depending on your mission, this could be as broad as the war in Ukraine or as narrow as a relevant local news story.
Where were the increases- what did you do differently during that month- Did you have more social media posts? An additional newsletter outreach? More personal phone calls?
WRITE IT DOWN
Who were your biggest donors?
What was the average size donor?
How many donors in total?
How many major donors did you have? This could be donors who contributed over $500, $1,000, $10,000, or $50,000 (you set the levels to fit your organization.)
Dig, Dig, and Dig some more - The more information you can garner and memorialize, the better prepared you will be for next year’s 4th quarter.
And, WRITE IT DOWN
Now, I bet you are wondering if you should look back at each month of 2022/2023 to look for patterns.
YES, I highlighted what to look at for year-end as it just happened so most of the info will be easy to find or remember.
Looking back is a critical part of fundraising to discover information like:
Who gives when?
Donor demographics?
What are your peak giving periods outside of year-end
What appeals worked best for larger donations and smaller donations?
Who gives yearly?
Who gives for episodic reasons?
With this said, don’t fall down the rabbit hole of data. Balance reviewing the past with making a plan for the future.
Don’t forget your ABC- Always be calling for new donors. I promise future blogs on ABC.
New Year is a great time to reach out to Team Kat & Mouse.
New Tactics and Tools to grow your fundraising for 2024 are just an email away!
Read Our Other Blog: Patience and Perseverance in 2024
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