Little Green Light is a cloud-based donor management system for fundraisers.
Subscribe to get our latest product updates, best practices and tips to grow your nonprofit.
The halfway point through the calendar year offers a valuable opportunity for fundraisers. Whether you’re on track to meet your fundraising goals or you’re falling a bit short at midyear, there’s still ample time to prepare for a strong second half of the year. In fact, what you do at midyear can play a big role in minimizing your stress and maximizing your fundraising results for the remainder of the year.
This service helps you maintain up-to-date addresses for your contacts. Many mailing houses offer this service for nonprofits. Otherwise, update address records manually and in a timely manner when you receive returned mail. And if you currently have a backlog of returned mail, reserve a block of time on your calendar to tackle that. You want your year-end appeal to successfully reach as many constituents as possible, and maintaining up-to-date contact information is the best way to do that.
Ask program staff and other colleagues if any experiences or anecdotes spring to mind for them. Staring at a blank page is intimidating, so do yourself a favor and jot down some ideas now, before you’re facing a deadline. And, start a folder of images that could be used in your appeal or make a list of pictures you’d like to get while there’s still time. That way, when it’s time to craft your appeal, you’ll have resources right at your fingertips to help you get started.
Your year-end appeal solicitation shouldn’t mark the first time donors have heard from you since your last appeal. Instead, donors should already feel well-informed of your organization’s current work when they receive your year-end appeal. If you decide your communications have been lacking, you still have time to reach out to supporters and effectively lay the groundwork for your year-end appeal.
Take stock of the application requirements for each, and make a plan for how and when you’ll collect those required materials. If you’re using Little Green Light, you can use goals and tasks to stay organized. And for those pieces of information that you’ll need colleagues to provide, such as financial statements or program data, give them plenty of notice. They can then incorporate those to-dos into their own plans, and you can all avoid last-minute stress or, worse, missed deadlines.
Conclusion
With six months left of the calendar year, it’s a perfect time to utilize these midyear fundraising tips to prepare your fundraising operations for the second half of the year and set up your organization for a strong year-end fundraising season.
Ready to try LGL? Get your first 30 days free. No credit card required.