Is your nonprofit looking for a fundraising edge as we head into year-end giving? If so, you’re not alone. Nonprofits raise a significant percentage of their total funds from October to December, and there are a lot of charities vying for year-end dollars. What’s the best strategy for success? 

In our world, the answer to many problems begins by looking at data. And we love our pals at NextAfter because they feed us a steady diet of excellent, accurate, and unbiased nonprofit data that helps us advise our clients. When we received the latest year-end benchmark report, we dove right in to see if any of the insights could help us share some strategies. 

The answer was, of course, yes. In this article, we will review a few key findings from the report and offer thoughts on how that data can impact any nonprofit. We would urge everyone to read the whole report, as the extensive information provides tremendous value. 

Communication is Critical 

NextAfter found that 40% of the nonprofits surveyed (more than 200 nonprofits asked about their activity at the end of last year) reported not sending any emails to new online donors last year. 

One of the most fundamental pillars of donor management is to make your donors feel appreciated and recognized. This turns a donation into a relationship, and loyal donors become monthly givers and sometimes even tip into major gift prospects. Thanking your donors almost instantly is critical to growing your nonprofit. 

To make this easy and hands-off, use automations in your CRM to send a thank-you email as soon as that donation is received. You can automate just about any communication or routine task, meaning that you can thank your donor and acknowledge their gift, send nurturing emails leading up to the next ask, and even send them to your donor portal to download tax forms…without crafting and sending individual emails.  

Another interesting finding about the lack of communications is that 29% of organizations didn’t send anything to donors at year-end, even direct mail. This is such a missed opportunity! If you craft an automated campaign in which you thank a donor, nurture a donor, and then appeal for another gift before the campaign ends, you could double your fundraising. And you don’t have to stick to only email because… 

Multichannel Can Amplify Engagement and Maximize Reach  

Another NextAfter stat: Only 36% of organizations used a multichannel approach last giving season. Furthermore, they share: 

• Mid and high-performing organizations are more likely to use a multichannel strategy 
• Adding a text message to an email appeal increased donations by 27% 

This is another tenant of smart fundraising. Craft a compelling multichannel campaign for the most effective campaigns! CharityEngine offers all core fundraising tools in one system (think email, contact records for phone and mail outreach, P2P, events, text-to-give, automation, and more), meaning all your data is in one place, in real time. This makes creating and executing multichannel campaigns easy, but it also makes the data actionable. If, for example, you note that adding a text to an email campaign works well but phone outreach isn’t getting the results you want, you can simply replace the calls with another channel.  

If you’re looking for a how-to guide or some ideas, we’d be happy to share ideas with you.