The annual fund is an internal phrase fundraisers use to refer to the drive(s) held during the 12-months of a calendar year to raise the revenue to cover your organization’s operating expenses.
Many readers of the LAPA blog have asked me if the annual fund is dead. Why are they concerned?
Your year-end fundraising strategy must pay special attention to the last four days of the year. December is the most lucrative giving month of the year, and especially so for online giving. Approximately one out of every three dollars in annual giving is donated in December. In fact, 28% of nonprofits raise between 26% and 50% of their annual funds from their year-end drive. An additional 36% of nonprofits raise nearly 10% of their annual funds from their year-end ask. For online giving, the figure is even higher, with 12% of all annual online giving coming in the last four days. (Statistics
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” ~Meister Eckhart, (1260 – 1328) Your Thanksgiving Thank-A-Thon is critical to your year-end fundraising drive; but it’s also the penultimate moment for you to express unabashed gratitude to your donors and funders. My blog posts this month have been all about boosting your year-end giving. I’ve already described what’s ahead for year-end giving in 2022; you can read about that here. Last week, I wrote about empowering your board members to take leadership roles in year-end fundraising and recommended that you create
“Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” Well, whatever aesthetic criteria Oscar had in mind when talking about literature, we can now scientifically say the same for fundraising copy. All I’ve ever done is write copy (I mean, I’ve done other stuff with my life, but not for a living). But it’s only in the past year, since testing and launching the Copy Optimizer, I’ve had any objective criteria by which to assess whether anything I wrote was good or bad. In the fundraising world good or bad is defined by response rate. But despite endless drafts and rounds
A reader asks, “Doesn’t giving slowdown in the summer?” Summertime is usually a challenging time for nonprofit fundraising and is often seen as the “off season.” Statistics show that nonprofits bring in less than 5% of their annual fundraising revenue in both July and August, respectively. Also, less donations are usually made during these two summer months than the rest of the year. Five Immediate Summertime Actions To make the most of the dog days of summer, consider these five immediate action steps: Increase your donor cultivation and stewardship Pick up the phone and call your major donors, even if
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA We try our utmost to avoid it, but feeling uncomfortable is key to fundraising mastery. In fact, the more advanced fundraising you seek, the more uncomfortable feelings rise. Yet it is an enormous (and lucrative) gift to yourself, and especially to your nonprofit, to work through these initial feelings. Aversion for being uncomfortable is understandable. Uncomfortable situations trigger feelings of being out of control. Anxiety and fear storm through us and our bodies get tense. Being uncomfortable goes against our innate desire to feel calm and at peace. Many fundraisers call me when they are
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA Sending annual giving statements to your donors and funders is a fundraising best practice — and an amazing opportunity to show love to your donors. An annual giving statement is also an opportunity to inform your donors about what makes your nonprofit unique. Donors tell me that they look more favorably at nonprofits that provide gift statements. These documents signal that the nonprofit is thoughtful and organized — and it gives many donors timely and highly useful information as they prepare their income tax returns. Here’s a sample gift statement that I like a lot.
By Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA A well-executed recurring giving program can generate consistent, ongoing revenue for your mission. Brooklyn Defender Services, a LAPA Fundraising client, recently closed its 2021 annual fund campaign with nearly 6,000 new donors — and recently established a monthly giving program as part of the effort to boost its annual fund. By identifying annual fund donors who are willing to support the organization through automated monthly contributions, Brooklyn Defender Services now has a steady stream of recurring revenue in 2022 from these newly acquired supporters. Your organization can follow a similar path by creating data-driven, personalized
By Brooke Bryant, Ph.D; Robin Merle, CFRE; and Laurence A. Pagnoni, MPA As we approach a new year, fundraisers continue to navigate an unsettled landscape. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, calls for racial justice, changing donor expectations, and a tight labor market have been central themes in 2021 — and they will continue to influence how we approach our work in 2022. Against that backdrop, we offer these 12 fundraising trends to watch over the next 12 months: The 12 Biggest Nonprofit Trends for 2022 Donors Will Give More Generously Equity Must Be Front and Center Hybrid Is Here to Stay Megadonors Will Be
By Ryan Carpenter November and December are a prime time for philanthropy, with 31% of donations occurring in December alone. But if you aren’t prepared to ride the coming wave of support, you could be leaving dollars behind. One of the best strategies to make the most of the giving season is to develop segmented messages for various donor groups. Given that donors have been shown to give 10% to 25% more when messages are personalized, you must not ignore the power of customized messages. Any fundraiser can apply the following segmentation best practices to #GivingTuesday and year-end campaigns. The
