3 Simple Actions To Take For Your Mid-Year Fundraising Check-Up

Could a simple phone call or face-to-face meeting revolutionize your mid-year fundraising success?

In this episode of The Practice of Nonprofit Leadership, Tim and Nathan unpack the critical steps to personally engage with top donors and re-engage those who may have fallen off the radar. Learn how to carefully review your donor lists to spot trends, make those essential connections that drive your fundraising goals forward, and prepare for an impactful and effective year-end fundraising focus.

Interested in downloading the Donor Meeting agenda mentioned in this episode?  Click here.

Chapters

• 0:03 Mid-Year Fundraising Check
• 8:30 Strategic Year-End Fundraising Planning

Transcript

Nathan Ruby: 0:03

When you boil it all down. The most important thing you can do right now is go talk to your donors.

Tim Barnes: 0:11

Welcome to the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership. I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby. Well, nathan 2024 is moving at a fast pace, is moving at a fast pace and as we record this episode, it's already midsummer and, before you know it, the back to school sales, which I think have already started, will be even in fuller swing than they are right now.

Nathan Ruby: 0:36

Tim, you are absolutely right, and before we know it, it'll be Halloween advertisements and then Christmas right around the corner. But because we're midsummer, that's why today we're going to be covering three simple things that you can do as you look at your mid-year fundraising. Let's call it a mid-year fundraising check.

Tim Barnes: 0:58

Well, that sounds good. I'm actually kind of surprised. There's only three things that you have to do.

Nathan Ruby: 1:03

Well, that's a good point, Tim, but we are trying to keep this episode under three hours, so we're just going to focus on three.

Tim Barnes: 1:11

All right. Well, let's go. That's encouraging. Hey, before we jump in, we have taken a bit of a break. We're back and maybe you're finding our podcast for the first time, which we're really excited about that. But if you have just come across this, we would encourage you. Can you click the follow button? We'd love you to stay in touch with us and also, from time to time, we make materials and things available. So click on that follow button. We'd love you to walk along with us. All right, Nathan, let's jump into what we have today.

Nathan Ruby: 1:41

All right, here we go. Number one is communicating with your donors, and the first thing you have to ask yourself is have you personally talked to your top donors? And when I say personally, that means face-to-face or on the phone, not text, not email. Have you made a personal connection? And when I say top donors, that's kind of more up to you decide what that means, based on the size of your donor file. It could be five or 10 or 20, or maybe it's even two. It just depends on those donors that let's say it this way. Let's say it this way If you have a donor and you did not get their gift this year, would it hurt? Would you notice that they didn't make that gift? So you could count that as a top donor? So, whoever those donors are, however many of them there are, those are the people that you should be personally communicating with, at least now, if you haven't done so already.

Tim Barnes: 2:47

You know, if you're a small organization, you may have five people that really give big gifts or give you the highest gifts. That's your top donors, right? Or maybe your bigger organization you have 20 people, but it's relative to where you are right now, right, but it's relative to where you are right now.

Nathan Ruby: 3:03

Right, yeah, absolutely, and just as a frame of reference, in my organization we have 400, 450, 500 active donors, and my number would be probably 25 is about where I'm at and I will full disclosure. I have communicated with all 25 personally, for sure. And well, let me walk that back. Either I have personally communicated with them or the board member who is assigned to them has communicated with them, and we try to do that once a quarter, so, for sure, if you haven't done it by half the year over, now is the time to reach out and start doing that. Communicating with your donors is the single most important thing you can do, and if you don't do that, it'll be incredibly difficult to hit your fundraising goals for this year. You just can't do it without communicating to your donors. And when you do call your donors, if you hear phrases like, oh, I haven't heard from you in a while, or oh, it's been such a long time, well, those are red flags, so those are not good things. So go talk to your top donors. That is number one.

Tim Barnes: 4:23

Nathan. I think it's a great, great point because I feel like we live in a society that you know it's great text, you know social media. It's just easy to connect around that way, but we lose out on the importance of actually getting face-to-face over a cup of coffee, or on the phone or or taking a walk or something that's. That's something we just kind of seem like we get so busy and we lose out on.

Nathan Ruby: 4:47

Yeah, and it is, and I'm not immune to it. It's a lot easier to shoot off a text to a donor and say, hey, just thinking about you. I hope you're doing all right. I'll be coming to town next month. I'll be calling you to schedule an appointment. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is not the level of connection that it takes to maximize a donor's gift. And I do have some donors in the past that would prefer to communicate that way. And I'm not saying don't ever text your donors, that's not what I'm saying that way. And I'm not saying don't ever text your donors, that's not what I'm saying. But periodically, over time, you have got to have that personal connection and you won't be able to fundraise without it. We know that meeting your donors face-to-face can be well kind of intimidating. Good news is, we have something that can help you. Click the link in the show notes and download our free donor meeting agenda. This agenda will prepare you to meet with your donors, accomplish your purpose for the visit and have fun at the same time. It's a free download and we promise we won't spam you. All right?

Nathan Ruby: 6:05

Number two let's double check your donors year to date. So let's take a few minutes and look at your donor list. Who hasn't given yet this year? Who normally does? Call them up and share what's happening in the organization? Who has given less than they normally do? Call them and share with them stories about what's going on in the organization. Who is given less than they normally do? Call them and share with them stories about what's going on in the organization. Who is given significantly more than normal? Call them and share with them stories about what's going on in the organization.

Nathan Ruby: 6:45

So the key is you're looking for anomalies. You're looking for things that stand out as unique. So if you have a donor now it's mid-summer. So if you have one of your major donors, one of your, your top two or five or ten or twenty, whatever it is, and they get normally given november and they haven't given yet mid-summer, okay, well, I'm not worried about them because they give at year end and so I still expect that gift to be coming Now. If you haven't reached out to that donor, now's the time to reach out to them, but I wouldn't worry about them.

Nathan Ruby: 7:21

But if I have a donor who typically gives in let's just say March and it's now mid midsummer and they haven't given yet, that is a red flag. I am absolutely calling them up and re-engaging with them. So, in the same way, if somebody has given less, no, I'm not calling them up and saying oh you know, mr and Mrs Donor, I see that you decreased your gift by 50% this year. Why did you do that? I'm not that blunt, but what you need to do there is just call up or go visit and make sure that they understand all the great things that you're doing. And then somebody who's given significantly more oh my gosh, that is a huge green flag that they are more committed, they're more connected. Something's going on there, and so you need to go find out why and what's going on, because there might be even more dollars there available for you to accomplish the mission of your organization. So those are just three quick things I'd be looking for in that donor file mid-year.

Tim Barnes: 8:30

I know we've talked about it in another podcast, nathan, but the idea that you can rattle that off fairly quickly, that you know the patterns of your donors, that you have a system in place that you can go and get that information, that's really good. And sometimes, as small organizations, we're kind of just we're not paying enough attention, we don't have systems in place to easily get that information.

Nathan Ruby: 8:55

Yeah, that's a good, good point, tim, thanks for bringing that up. And you know, if you have, if your organization has a fundraising database, all of that information will be in that database if it's up to date. And if you don't know how to get that information out, call up the database company. Call their helpline and they will help you do it. I use the database that we have. I have never run a query in my life. I just call them up, say this is the information I want they do it for me. Five minutes later I have the information. So don't be intimidated by not understanding how to do the query. Ask the company to help you do it.

Nathan Ruby: 9:38

If you don't have a database, if you're not that mature yet as an organization, or if you're just not that sophisticated, just go with your gut. I mean, you know who your top donors are. You know who they are. So just write down the list of those top 5, 10, 15, whatever the number is, and go see them. Then, as a follow-up to that, really consider spending the money and I know it's money and I know it could be expensive, but spending the money to go and find a database that works for you. There are. There are, oh my gosh. I don't know if there's hundreds, but there's 30, 40, 50, 60 of them out there. There's a bunch of them out there. A lot of them are free to organizations that are smaller and have a smaller donor base. Now that doesn't mean there's not cost, because there's cost to getting it set up and converting your data. There's plenty of cost, but you will definitely recoup that expense by having a more systematic way to identify your donors.

Nathan Ruby: 10:46

That was number two. Double check your donors year to date, all right. Number three is plan out your year-end direct mail strategy. Now, most organizations do some type of year-end direct mail, an appeal letter, something of that nature. There are very few organizations who don't do that that nature. There are very few organizations who don't do that. So if that is you, and if you're using a year-end letter of some type to capitalize on the frenzy of year-end giving that takes place, here's how you do it, and you need to start planning it now. So I got three steps for you. So step one is start planning now, and you do that by deciding what your year-end appeal is going to look like and what the themes are going to be.

Nathan Ruby: 11:38

And personally, I use a two-step approach. I actually send two year-end letters. The first one is in late October, usually the third week. Third week is my target. October usually the third week, third week is my target. Sometimes it's the fourth week before it goes out, but it's the third week and in that letter I'm focusing on what we've accomplished in the year. So we are looking back in the year. We're telling stories about all the great things we've accomplished as an organization. So that's the October letter.

Nathan Ruby: 12:13

Then I send a second letter the week after Thanksgiving and that letter is vision for the next year. What are we planning to do in the upcoming year? And both of those the basis of those letters, of those appeal letters, are stories You're not listing out. Well, we replaced the roof and we fixed the toilet and, oh yeah, we saw 37 people and we did this and we did this. Nobody cares about that. What they want to hear is a story of how you impacted somebody's life. So the October letter is how we did it this year and the November letter is how we're planning to do it next year. Late October, early November, you know. Or or the week after Thanksgiving Uh, you know, it used to be earlier in my career, tim, that I I can remember the first year, uh, my first year as a development director.

Nathan Ruby: 13:11

Uh, I was supposed to send out a letter and I didn't know anything about it. And so I just I took last year's letter that was in the file and I changed the year and I changed some words in it and I gave it to the it to the CEO of the organization and he loved it and out it went, and it went out like the third week of December and everybody was so excited that we got it done. But now if you're sending out an appeal letter the third week of December, you're too late. Week of December, you're too late. Your donors have already mostly made their commitments, unless you've got one. That's like your top donors that are just so excited about what you're doing. You could still get down, but for the most part you've missed it if you're sending late December. So that has changed over my career. All right, so that's an October November appeal letter.

Nathan Ruby: 14:08

Another thing I want you to do is I want you to send a newsletter in late September, and you can't get in the habit when you do direct mail. You can't get in the habit of just sending them a letter when you need money. That's kind of treating your donors like an ATM and that's not going to work. And in the newsletter, again, we're telling stories about all the great things that you've done. And if you have a formal newsletter that you're already sending out on a regular basis, september is a great month to send that out, because then that sends up the September, october, november. That gives you three touches to your donors coming up on year end. If you don't have a formal newsletter system in place, it's okay, just send a letter, just write out a one-page letter. Thank you so much for your support. It means so much.

Nathan Ruby: 15:07

Next paragraph I wanted to share with you a story about, you know, joe or Jim or Bob or the Andersons or whatever, and you know this is what their situation is, this is how we help them, this is what the outcome was, and that would be the middle. And then the ending is we can't do this without you. Thank you so much. Et cetera, et cetera, goodbye. So it could just be a letter. It doesn't have to be what we would consider a formal newsletter. So that gives you a September touch, an October touch, a November touch. Then, if you wanted to, you could come back if you still have some donors that are hanging out there. You could come back in December then with a simple postcard and, as a reminder, you could do that the third week if you still have some donors who you think should be giving, who haven't yet. So that would give you September, october, november, december, and that's how you do direct mail.

Nathan Ruby: 16:07

Now, don't send me any emails. Well, actually, send your emails to Tim. Don't send them to me about oh, there's no way that I could contact my donors four months in a row. That's too much. It too much. Uh, your donors will love having that level of attention. And how many times have you set out to do something and then the phone rings, or you get a text, or you get an email and all of a sudden, your, your thoughts are totally off of whatever you were going to do. Tim, that happens to me more and more and more, uh, daily right, I know.

Tim Barnes: 16:42

And that happens to your donors. And so more Daily, right, I know, I know.

Nathan Ruby: 16:44

And that happens to your donors. And so they forget they're going to write a check somebody's at the door, whatever, and they forget to do it. So these reminders, these touches, will absolutely increase your year-end giving.

Tim Barnes: 16:59

So the item for today, for now midsummer, is start planning that out now for a number of things and and doing some of the fundraising can really be. You could automate so many things today to kind of keep you on track. But I know something that you believe really strongly is that fundraising is personal. It's not. I mean we can't rely completely on automation. It can help do some things.

Nathan Ruby: 17:46

Yeah, you do have to make it personal and you know there's a I don't know if this is what this is actually called, but early in my career, one of my early mentors one of the things they would always tell me is you can't get milk out of a cow by sending it a letter and a little graphic but the visual is accurate and letters. I just got done talking about direct mail and there is absolutely a place for direct mail in pretty much everyone's fundraising strategy. But it's only a tool and direct mail is never going to get you the big gifts, the transformational gifts, the gifts where you open the letter and you say, holy smokes, I can't believe that they just send that gift. Those gifts don't come from direct mail. Those gifts come from a personal connection with the donor and I think sometimes executive directors are confused when they think that donors don't want a deeper level of connection, because they do.

Nathan Ruby: 18:59

And I know, tim, you're the same way as you've grown and developed in your fundraising skills and you know all of my life as I fundraised donors where I know their kids, I know their grandkids, I know when they're traveling, I know when they're sick or injured or going in for a procedure. I know those things because I have a relationship with them. Yes, it's part of the organization and yes, it's part of the giving process, but it's this separate relationship that is built over time and those are the best gifts. And if you are not developing those personal relationships with your donors, you are missing out not only on gifts but you're also missing out on part of the joy that being the executive director brings. It is this higher level of connection with people and I mean, I suppose if you're an introvert maybe that's a little more difficult, but certainly for extroverts or even somebody in the middle, those relationships can bring joy and fun to the job of executive director, which isn't always fun, tim.

Tim Barnes: 20:33

That's some great thoughts, nathan man. So many practical, wise input in this episode. I appreciate that. Why don't you give us something to hang our hat on as we finish up?

Nathan Ruby: 20:45

Well, as we just got done talking about Tim, fundraising is personal. You have to connect with your donors and make them feel that they are part of the solution that your organization is delivering. If they don't feel like they are part of it, they will not give to you. They will give to some other organization who does make them feel part of their solution. When you boil it all down, the most important thing you can do right now is go talk to your donors.

Tim Barnes: 21:20

Thanks for listening today and we appreciate you being a part of this podcast. Encourage you, as we mentioned earlier, to follow us on your, where you listen to your podcast. We'd love to stay in touch with you. Our contact information is always in the show notes. That's all for today. Until next time.