Tri Point Support: Year End Already?

Sometimes it's great to get a reminder about a task.  As a fundraiser, you wear so many hats it's often hard to remember what foot is going in front of the other.  (Especially not good for someone who is also a runner - albeit a slow one). 

I just got the email from Amy Eisenstein regarding year end fundraising. My first thought was, "is it really that time?"  But really, it is.  We've already started a conversation as to how we'll approach year-end giving but it may be time to kick it into high-gear. Fortunately, it seems we are on the right track with our brainstorming. Also, read Amy's post - she and it are fabulous.

1.  Get in touch with donors:  Our upcoming meeting is a great time for us to identify our donors and start a conversation, tell them where they investments in the organization went this year and remind them about upcoming fundraising goals.

2.  The letter:  The Shelter sends out three newsletters each year as their only snail mail communications with donors.  Prior to this past newsletter, the only newsletter accompanied by a note or letter was end of year giving. They are pretty committed to this type of communication; however I got them to agree to put a note in the summer newsletter and we'll see how that plays out.  It had stats on how many people served to date, referenced a story in the newsletter about a client and told a little about her, and made an ask directly. And it said thanks in advance.  We have already started talking about gathering client stories, pictures, and more for the winter newsletter. Our last meeting we talked about a particular volunteer we'd like to highlight for the newsletter.  I think a few more testimonials couldn't hurt and some great stats.

3. Online: I usually don't donate to them online; however I donate everywhere else online.  I think this means their website could use some work and are we featuring the donate now in EOY emails?  That's usually when I get reminded to donate to my favorite organizations. I like things to land in my inbox. I am certainly an advocate for emails on the 27, 29, 31 or some combination of dates.

4. Social Media: I had spoken with one of the chairs of our holiday event about upping our holiday exposure via social media by collecting stories on Facebook about volunteering at the holidays. More than 400 residents from near and far gather at various holidays from Nov-Dec to help the  Shelter and we should be sharing their stories and getting some great photos. We should also see if we can get the video of Buddy of Carlo's Bakery online to repost. His popularity is certainly not waning. There had been talk of creating a video and if we cannot get a video done from an outside source I think we should do a rough cut video created with my mac to show pictures and what funding has done this year. I also think we need to have pictures taken at the holidays so we can post immediately to tell funders their dollars feed people and maybe a new picture for our Facebook page with people eating at Thanksgiving that says "thanks be to all." 

5. Tooting our Horn:  We'll have to make sure we share our stats in the newsletter.  I stated some ways to toot our horn via Facebook and video. We'll be having a holiday fundraiser, which would be a great place to share a mission centered video.  We'll be doing press releases leading up to that but we can do a post release on all we accomplished - we have some pretty great press contacts.

Unique ideas (off the top of my head):

• For our 30th event in May we created little cards (3x5) with our donation needs - perhaps we can have those reprinted with our statistics. 
• The ED is such an ever-present face for the Shelter - it might be nice to do a EOY video with her thanking the community and asking for their support, which we could also use as a press release. 

If anything else pops up in this tired ol' brain I'll be sure to post it.  I also plan to post a copy of the note we worked on that I mentioned above.