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3 tips to prepare for your year-end appeal

Posted July 25, 2024 by Virginia Davidson

3 tips to prepare for your year-end appeal

As you get ready for your year-end fundraising push, it’s beneficial to think through, test, and prepare for your appeal in advance.

Here are three recommendations to help you prepare for year-end

Determine who will receive the appeal

Think carefully about who should receive your appeal, such as current and lapsed donors. Also consider who shouldn’t receive it (for example, anyone who has made a gift in the last three months). It can be useful to brainstorm on a piece of paper before you start building searches in your database. That way, you’ll have more clarity when you start building the searches that you will end up using in your appeal.

Schedule time to build and review searches in your database

Give yourself uninterrupted time to focus on not just creating searches, but also on reviewing the results of those searches. You know your data best. Pick a constituent you know shouldn’t be among your search results, and one you know should be. Review your search results and keep an eye out for those names. What should you do if a name appears that shouldn’t, or you’re missing a name that should be among the search results? That tells you you will need to review your search criteria and modify it, or you’ll need to review that constituent’s record and possibly correct errors. By allotting ample time to check for problems and correct them, you’ll avoid the stress of deadlines.

Make sure your contact information is in good shape

For printed letters, we suggest enabling Address Verification in your LGL account. (If you use a mail house they will typically run your list through NCOA, so be sure they keep the LGL Constituent ID and LGL Address ID in your files.) For email, review everyone you plan to email the appeal to so you can be sure they can receive email.

Conclusion

The time you invest in advance will help you launch a year-end appeal that reaches the right supporters and raises essential funds for your organization.

 


Looking for more ideas on how to create a comprehensive year-end fundraising plan? Then check out Sandy Rees’ virtual Inspired Fundraising Retreat coming up on August 22-23, 2024. All participants will receive her 4-month calendar template, which will walk you through EVERYTHING you need to build relationships, raise awareness, and bring in money.

LGL’ers get a special discount. Learn more at Get Fully Funded.

 

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