Developing a Year-End Campaign Work Plan

Year-end fundraising is a great opportunity for nonprofit organizations to meet their fundraising goals. According to Charity Navigator, 31 percent of all annual giving occurs during December. Therefore, creating a concrete fundraising plan or roadmap with a list of essential tasks, target donors, and outreach tactics is important. Below are four phases for developing your year-end campaign work plan. 

READY: Pre-planning Phase

The first phase of developing a year-end campaign work plan is to assess your current resources and organizational needs. Reflect on your organization’s past finances, fundraising activities, and results. How much was raised last year, and who contributed? What went well, and what feedback was provided to help you improve this year’s campaign? Also, this is the opportunity to engage your board members and development staff to define SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. Setting SMART goals helps your team have clarity, stay on track, and motivate your staff, volunteers, and donors to support your work plan. Additionally, identify a recent impact your organization has made so you can highlight that story to compel your donors to give this year (a case for support or a call to action).

SET: Planning Phase

The next phase consists of three parts: a) plan tasks and delegate responsibilities, b) create a gift range chart and a list of donors to make ‘the ask,’ and c) prepare marketing materials and schedule communication pieces. As you plan specific tasks, assign who will complete them and when. Who will craft compelling stories for letters, emails, and social media posts? Who will be designing marketing materials and graphics? Who will generate a donor report showing the number of donors that gave last year and their gift amounts? After gathering information about your donors, create a gift range chart. Gift range charts identify how many donors you need at each specific gift level to help you meet your fundraising goals (e.g., we need 5 donors that may give $1,000, 10 donors that may give $500, 35 donors that may give $250, and so on to help us collectively raise $15,000). Lastly, your communication plan should be comprehensive, including who will receive letters, emails, phone calls, and face-to-face invitations, as well as posting messages on various social media accounts and your organization’s website.

ACTION: The Ask Phase

After you have planned the details, now is the time to implement your work plan. First, mail out letters and send emails. Post messages on your organization’s social media and encourage sharing them. Invite your donors for coffee or face-to-face interaction. Also, send reminders to your donors as time gets closer to the year-end campaign date. Finally, make it easy for donors to make their contributions (e.g., include a paid postage envelope for individuals to mail their checks or a URL for a quick online transaction).

WRAP UP: Stewardship Phase

Whew! But wait… Completing the year-end campaign is not over yet without including a stewardship plan. Set some time to recognize and thank all of your donors (ideally within 24 to 48 hours of their gift). Also, put together a report that measures and analyzes how many donors participated in your campaign and summarizes what went well and what could be improved for next year.

Developing the details of your work plan into four different phases helps your team stay focused and organized, but they also help build the confidence of your staff, board members, volunteers, and donors. Here is an example basic checklist to help you get started in developing your year-end campaign work plan. Of course, each organization’s game plan is different, so feel free to add additional action items to the checklist or set up a free initial consultation with us today!

Subscribe to The Nonprofit Spark

We share tons of tips, tools, grant opportunities, and resources in our weekly digest, The Nonprofit Spark. Don’t miss out on this week’s content — Subscribe today at www.sparkgroupconsulting.com

-Blog articles on fundraising

-Continuing Education 

-A FREE download: Year-End Campaign Pitfalls

-Conversations with sector leaders: Campaign Strategies