Best Practices 5 min read

10 Year-End Fundraising Tips

Eric Burger November 25, 2024

10:05

Did you know that 30% of donations are made in December? 10% of all annual giving happens between December 29^th and 31^st!

With so many donations being made during the final days of December, your nonprofit must have a strong year-end fundraising strategy. Follow these tips to make sure that you don’t leave money on the table.

Why Do People Give in December?

These donation statistics are staggering, but why do so many people give in December specifically?

The answer is multi-faceted:

Holiday spirit: The holiday season is full of celebrations that highlight generosity, compassion, and gratitude. As we prepare to give gifts to our loved ones, it just makes sense to also give gifts to causes we are passionate about. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, many people spend the holiday season reflecting on their actions over the past year and trying to make a positive impact. The cold weather and long, nights also make us appreciate our material blessings—like warm clothes, food, heating, and electricity—more keenly, while also highlighting the struggles of the less fortunate. Simply put, the holiday spirit of “peace and goodwill to men” motivates a lot of year-end fundraising donations.
Tax deductions: Nonprofit donations are tax-deductible, but while certain tax deductions can be accounted for when you do your taxes in the spring, all charitable gifts have to occur during the calendar year. If an individual or business is looking to meet their tax goals for 2024, they will need to make that tax-deductible donation before January 1^st.
Budgeting: As the year comes to a close, many individuals will evaluate their budget, and discover that they have some extra money on hand. Maybe they got a larger-than-expected holiday bonus, or maybe they overestimated the amount of money they would spend in a specific budget category. Many people choose to pay this blessing forward with a charitable donation.

No matter what motivates your donors to give, capitalizing on year-end fundraising can make a massive difference for your organization.

The Top 10 Year-End Fundraising Tips

A successful year-end fundraising campaign can shape your programs in 2025 and beyond. Here are our top 10 tips to ensure you maximize your year-end fundraising efforts:

Look at Previous Campaigns

Your year-end fundraising strategy should start with a look at the past. What have your last few year-end fundraising campaigns looked like, and how successful were they? Lean into the messages that have resonated with your audience and use previous data to inform your new goals and projections.

If last year’s fundraising push was successful, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Continue using the techniques that resonate with your audience while experimenting with some extra personalization, flair, or incentives that can plus up the donor experience and maximize your return on investment.

However, if your year-end fundraising campaigns have been dropping in engagement, you should reconsider your strategy. Use a variety of techniques, including social media analytics, surveys, and focus groups, to discover why your message isn’t landing. You can even reach out to lapsed donors directly and politely ask why they stopped supporting your organization.

Give Your Year-End Fundraiser a Specific Purpose

Fundraising campaigns are always more successful when they are targeted to a specific goal because donors want to know where their money is going. Since many nonprofits keep their year-end fundraising campaigns a little more general, you can stand out if you have a clear fundraising purpose.

Pick a specific program, event, or goal that you want to support in 2025 and build your campaign around it. Consider using the SMART system, setting goals that are:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

When you set a clear, challenging, yet realistic goal, your donors will be more motivated to help you achieve it.

Segment Your Donors

Different donors have different priorities. Segmenting your donors allows you to target your year-end fundraising communications in a way that will engage specific demographics and increase conversion rates.

Consider common donor segments like:

First-time donors
Recurring donors
Lapsed donors
Major gifts
Location
Age
Income
Interests

When you understand who your donors are and what motivates them, it is easier to create a fundraising message that will inspire them to take action.

Hook Audiences with Engaging Marketing Narratives

Speaking of messages, your year-end fundraising campaign has to be built around compelling marketing. Your nonprofit has an amazing story, and you need to make sure that you tell it!

Craft strong year-end fundraising messages that highlight your mission and impact. The end of the year is a great time to look back on your successes, so be sure to showcase the biggest events from the past year and articulate your impact (i.e., number of beneficiaries served, number of services provided, monetary value of services, etc.). Include a mixture of personal testimonials, case studies, and statistics, creating a balance between emotionally charged language and compelling data.

Once you have your year-end fundraising narrative, share it! Spread the word over a variety of marketing channels, including social media, newsletters, peer-to-peer fundraising, local media outlets, flyers, and word-of-mouth.

Add Gift Matching

Did you know that 84% of donors are more likely to donate if their gift will be matched? Partner with a corporate sponsor, foundation, or benefactor—or leverage gift-matching software like Double the Donation—to maximize both your fundraising efforts and each donor’s impact.

Engage Your Volunteers

Volunteers are often an under-tapped fundraising resource. Volunteers are already your most enthusiastic supporters, and they will be happy to assist with your year-end campaign.

Mobilize your volunteers so they can support your year-end fundraising efforts through:

Running peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns through fundraising software and social media platforms
Assisting with fundraising event planning and execution
Spreading awareness about fundraising campaigns through word-of-mouth and social media
Securing in-kind donations, corporate partnerships, volunteer grants, and gift matching
Leading donation drives

In addition to supporting your fundraising efforts with their time and energy, volunteers are also some of your best leads for potential donors. Volunteers are 2x more likely to donate, and their gifts are usually 10x larger.

Take Advantage of Online Giving

The ease and convenience of online giving play a critical role in year-end fundraising. 63% of donors prefer to donate online. Refine your online donation process so that it is easy to give, minimizing donor fall-off.

Optimize your donation landing page by:

Linking it prominently on your website and social media
Ensuring the landing page looks good and works well on both desktop and mobile browsers
Reducing the number of required fields
Offering multiple secure payment options
Suggesting donation amounts
Including recurring gift options

The easier you make it to donate, the more donations you will receive!

Showcase Impact

Showcasing impact is key to both driving donations and improving donor retention. Throughout your year-end fundraising campaign, keep in contact with your donors to show them exactly how their money is making a difference:

Send an update after your GivingTuesday 2024 campaign to maximize your momentum, especially with new donors. Highlight the ways the campaign was successful and show where you still need additional funds.
Give regular year-end fundraising campaign updates in newsletters and on social media throughout December, especially as you near the critical giving time of the last week of the year.
Follow up with donors in January to show the impact of your year-end fundraising campaign. Continue to provide updates throughout the year to show how these donations support your efforts.

Showing your donors the impact they made doesn’t just make them feel good; it encourages them to keep giving!

Thank Your Donors

The most important way to engage your donors is to thank them. A little bit of appreciation goes a long way. Thank you notes are a must, but the holiday season can help you up your year-end fundraising campaign. Try sending holiday cards, offering incentives like gift cards and branded merchandise, and organizing donor-exclusive holiday parties. When you show donors how much they matter to you, you make them feel like a valued part of your organization.

Don’t Lose Momentum in the Final Week of the Year

While the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve can feel like a festive blur, don’t check out! Remember, 10% of annual donations are made from December 29^th to the 31^st.

Plan your final week push well in advance and automate as many tasks as possible so that even if a good chunk of your team is on vacation or working reduced hours, you can still take advantage of this critical giving time.

Better Manage Volunteers with VolunteerHub

VolunteerHub is the industry's leading volunteer management software, and we can help you maximize your volunteer engagement efforts. VolunteerHub offers a variety of volunteer management features, including unlimited landing pages, automated communications, fundraising features, and secure donation payment processing.