Back to basics - calendar year end

So we all know that people give at this time of year. Lots of them. Many do so because this is when they make their charitable decisions for the year. Others because it is good for their pocket and conscience come April. Still others do so in the spirit of the holiday season.

No matter the reason they give, in the next 6 weeks they do. It is each of our jobs to get as many of them to pick our organization as one of the places they choose to direct some (most of us want as many as possible) of the dollars they are giving away to.

We all do the fancy mailer, the calendar year end postcard, maybe thanksgiving (or thanks for giving) cards the reminders about the end of the year, maybe even an email between christmas and new years with some kind of countdown theme. How do you make yourself stand out and just as importantly how do you get the donors to choose you?

Make a case for support? Center on past donors? Create a video? Thank, thank thank? Yes. You won't go wrong doing any of those but to truly have an impact, you need to make it more personal. Put the time in to identify relationships throughout the year, identify effective solicitors (be they volunteers or internal) and assign each a manageable pool, I would suggest 15 or 20 each, that have both the capacity to make an impact and the relationship that you can leverage to get them to think about doing so. Supply each volunteer with a letter that is pre-written and merged or even printed without a date or signature a suggestion for an email ask and a simple phone script along with the data for each contact method and ask them to solicit that list at minimum through each medium and ideally until they get a response for a gift at the leadership level. Your job is to be the nudge - follow up with your volunteers daily if need be for the month. Identify where they are and what the next step is and remind, cajole, beg, plead, whatever you need to do to get this done. With a short list of 10 volunteers each soliciting 20 prospects they have a relationship with, it is not impossible to get 100 gifts of more than $1,000 each.

Simple math makes that a $100,000 effort - should you start planning for it next year?