Fall Fundraising

Fall Fundraising

Fall Fundraising

When it comes to marketing, planning ahead is a key strategy for a nonprofit organization’s success. With digital marketing, your nonprofit can prepare for major fundraising events and seasons with data to back it up. Fall and the subsequent end-of-year time frame is an important fundraising time for nonprofits. Your organization should be prioritizing and preparing for the season. We’ve put together a guide for your fall fundraising plans.

Year Round Preparedness

Every nonprofit organization ought to make sure their GuideStar profile is updated at all times. By updating your nonprofit profile, you can improve your level of transparency and easily provide updated information to Facebook, AmazonSmile, Network for Good, and many other organizations that use GuideStar’s information for fundraising purposes. Similarly, organizations should be registered for #GivingTuesday. By going to the GivingTuesday website and registering for the next date, you can officially share that your organization is participating in the popular end-of-year fundraising campaign that marks the transition from autumn to winter seasons following your fall fundraising campaign.

Prepare For Successful Campaigns

Use the time prior to autumn to engage with your audience with the marketing channels you intend to use for end-of-year giving so you have knowledge on what is most likely to succeed with your target audience.If you are considering a Display Ad campaign for your annual appeal or a major fundraiser, plan ahead by running test campaigns. A test campaign is a good way to dip your toes in the water of a new platform and understand the performance metrics. For example, try driving brand awareness traffic to your website through Display with a small budget in the summer. Brand awareness is a great tool to gain new followers, but it’s also an essential piece to having an effective fall fundraising campaign. The data gathered from this campaign can be used to drive your actual end-of-year giving appeals. With the benchmarks to back it up, you have a better idea of your target audience demographics and expected cost-per-result.

If you plan on running remarketing campaigns in the fall, audience population is required beforehand and can take some time. Running a test campaign in the summer months will not only help you identify your organization’s initial performance benchmarks, but it will also help build your nonprofit’s remarketing lists. The longer your remarketing list populates, the more accurate and widespread your reach will be. Start building your remarketing list today in platforms like Google Analytics, Hubspot, or Google Ads with a remarketing tag. From there, you can build those lists to be larger and stronger with your summer testing campaigns.

Search engines like Google take time to index and recognize, so it’s important to get ahead of landing page creation for your fall campaign if it requires its own URL. Use the planning time to also find a matching donor, which can double your donations instantly. If you plan to use Facebook for your fall fundraising strategy, you can start by creating a fundraiser landing page so that followers and supporters can fundraise on your behalf. Once GivingTuesday comes around, you can register on their website to receive matched donations from Facebook with your Facebook fundraiser.

In addition to the advertising strategy you should prepare any automation strategy you plan to implement. Your messaging for the campaign should be consistent throughout the campaign, from the first user impression to the donation thank you. The best performing fundraising campaign often comes from the Thank You For Donating page.

Follow Your Timeline

Once you have your testing done and have an idea for your fall campaign, organize a timeline for the rest of the work and stick to it. The months prior to your fall fundraising campaign are meant for planning your campaign objectives and strategizing. Start putting together the messaging for each platform, both online and offline.

You should start creating content and updating your landing pages for your fall fundraising campaign at least a month in advance. You can start sending emails to your subscribers and mailers to your supporters to start engaging your list. Your blog posts and special media shares will be the most helpful in telling you what messaging is most successful and resonates with your donors. When fall begins and you send the official asks, the fundraising campaign will not be a surprise to supporters and they will be ready and excited to help your mission.

Getting ready for fall fundraising should include a defined goal. That objective should be what drives your campaign strategy to the end. With the proper planning, the execution should be less stressful and have a better overall performance.

If you need assistance with your fall fundraising campaign, reach out to our team members today!