Are you planning your year-end fundraising campaign right now? Getting your messaging
right is going to be critical to your success! So in this video,
I'm going to share some tips to make your messaging inspiring and
compelling and get your donors to give to your year-end fundraising campaign. [Music]
Welcome or welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I'm a non-profit founder and executive
director. I love making these videos here on YouTube to help people who are on their social
impact journey through non-profits or Social Enterprise or other ways that you can make a
difference. As always I hope you find this video helpful and useful don't forget to give it a like
and subscribe to my channel for more content like this. If you are in the process of starting a
non-profit or developing a sustainable fundraising plan for your organization, check out my online
trainings at my website, FounderToFullTime.com and I hope that those can help you out. Okay so you
probably know this, but November and December are the biggest periods of the year for fundraising.
According to Nonprofit Tech for Good, like 31 percent of all giving that happens in the entire
year happens in December itself. There are many aspects to putting together what will hopefully
be a success successful year-end fundraising campaign - like deciding your fundraising goal
and deciding the format, whether you're going to be doing a letter appeal or do fundraising online,
or crowdfunding, or all of the above combined. But once you've figured out all of those components
the most important thing is to get your message right so I'm going to go through six tips that
will hopefully help you craft an inspiring message let's get into it alright tip number
one is to pick a theme for your messaging for your fundraising campaign just like you might
pick a theme for a party or a fundraising event having a theme for your campaign for the end of
the year is going to create a unifying inspiring message that will get your donors to give I find
it helpful when picking a theme to think about what my organization is doing right now in the
context of the grander scheme of the world the things that are going on in the world a good
fundraising campaign theme will have a few things in common it will be action oriented so we'll have
language in it that includes an ask like do X or X something you know it feels not passive but it
feels proactive and action oriented it will be not too long or complicated it'll be short and simple
and most importantly the theme will align with your organization's brand and Mission all right
let's take a look at a few example themes that I found that um I thought were pretty great charity
water one of their fundraising campaign themes was nothing is crazy that feels really inspiring to me
like dream big like you know supporting them will make big unexpected things possible I like that
um a group called athletes for cancer had a theme of no wait list
and I've never heard of this organization before I researched this but that theme tells me a lot
about this organization it tells me that they value reaching every person that they
can they value providing good services and that by supporting whatever this fundraising
campaign is you're going to make sure that they reach everyone so that's really compelling to me
um a group called The John Wayne Cancer Foundation had a theme of show your grit
um big fan of grit so I liked that one and then I made up a couple of examples here um on my own
but I'm sure someone has used these or something like these at some point plant the future this
might be a theme for an organization that focuses maybe on gardening or nature or tree planting or
something like that dig deep so it's you know double meaning you're asking your donors to dig
deep or to dig deep into their pocketbooks or into their souls um and maybe that would be a theme for
um I don't know building water wells or something like that and then a million meals might be a good
campaign theme for an organization focused on food insecurity anyway I hope that those get your brain
wheels turning and thinking about what a great theme for your campaign could be alright so you
got your theme now it's time to think about your audience tip number two is to know your audience
if you already have a donor database you want to see if you can study it and glean whatever
you can about things that your donors might have in common with each other or with the community
or or things that they might have in common with others who serve in your cause are your donors
um primarily people with families are are they pet lovers are they people who live in
specific areas of the Town anything you can pick up from looking at your donor list and
your donor database it's going to help you tailor messaging that might be more inspiring to them for
example if you know that a lot of your donors have families then perhaps later on in your messaging
you might use a story about a family that was positively impacted by your work alright tip
number three is to personalize your message you want your donor to feel like the message that
they have received is specifically to them and there are a couple of ways to do this the first
is what I just referenced which is tailoring your messaging to your audience so making it feel like
it's going to resonate with them personally but the other things are just technical like
making sure that you're using their first name in your emails or in your letter appeals making
sure that their name is spelled correctly things like that things that show that you honor them
as individuals and not just as people who might give you money okay the fourth tip for messaging
your year-end fundraising campaign is to be sure to share your impacts in your messaging
and I say that this is a good idea to do in all fundraising year round and that is absolutely true
um and you want to keep doing that you want to keep showcasing the good work that you are doing
to justify your need and use of the donations that you are receiving in so what have you all
been working on throughout the whole year leading up to this year-end request that you're making and
what does the future hold what will donors be able to help you achieve by giving and if you
can be as specific as possible maybe there is a new position you're trying to fund and if you
can fund that staff position you're going to be able to double the amount of people or animals
that your organization can serve that's pretty specific and the outcome is is pretty great there
maybe you're trying to fund a specific investment in equipment or building
um it can also be for General operating funds too there's nothing wrong with that just explain
um all of the things that you're going to be able to do with increased capacity as an organization
with the donors funds all right tip number five is kind of um related to tip number four sharing
your impact and that is to share the story of one person or if you serve animals animals are
community one story of impact and storytelling is very very powerful in fundraising there's
some good research out there that even describes how it's more powerful than sharing statistics
because people can wrap their brains around the story of someone and empathize more with
the story of someone than they could a statistic that is more abstract and in this story you really
want it to have a pretty particular story arc and that is there was a need this person encountered
our organization we served them to the best of our ability and as a result of that the person's need
was met their life was transformed somehow for the better you want to show the cause and effect
because of your organization this happened right one tip that I uh recommend something I've been
doing recently is it can be hard to especially if you're moving quickly and there's so much good to
be done it can be hard to remember all all of the things that you accomplished in a year and
all of the great stories that you might have had your work facilitate through your organization
so one thing I like to do is actually keep a log of stories of impact keeping them all in
one place so that if I need to find the perfect story to tell for the perfect situation I can go
reference my list of stories and think what would be the most compelling story for this
particular situation to make my point and to inspire this particular audience so that's
something I recommend doing is to watch constantly for stories and then write them down as soon as
they happen so that you can remember them for later alright and the sixth and final tip that
I'm going to share with you is to not forget your call to action there's nothing worse than writing
the most inspiring message and stories and and all that possible then you forget to do the very thing
you set out to do which was ask for support the call to action is the literal request for money
request for support whatever it is that you're hoping the person and reading your message will
do after reading your message that is the call to action so you always want to make sure that
you close out with a very clear succinct call to action like donate now donate here donate to help
us save more lives Etc and then the next part of that is you have to make it easy you can't make it
complicated to figure out how to fulfill the call to action make your donation link easy to find
easy to spell when people get on your donation link assuming you're doing an online campaign
it's got to be a good user experience on the page itself it shouldn't be complicated to fill
out the form to make the donation anything like that is just one more barrier stopping someone
from giving you money and we don't want that all right I'd love to hear from you are you currently
in the midst of planning your year-end fundraising campaign or or any fundraising campaign and what
did you think of some of these messaging ideas or maybe you have other tips for other people
planning their fundraising campaigns be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below as
always as I mentioned before if you're starting a non-profit or developing that sustainable
fundraising plan check out my train trainings at FounderToFullTime.com I also have a newsletter
that I send out to aspiring change makers and non-profit Leaders with resources tips and
sometimes funding opportunities that I come across you can subscribe to that using the link before
below this video and final thing I have a group on Facebook called change the world or bust so I
hope you can come join me and a couple thousand other people from around the world there too
once again I'm Amber Melanie Smith I hope that you found this useful and helpful don't
forget to give it a like And subscribe to my channel and I hope to see you next time bye.