Tag Archive for: Annual Fund

The air is getting crisp outside. The leaves are getting crunchier. School bus lights flash longer waiting for students to scurry aboard. This could only mean one thing – fall is here. These signs of fall should ignite the fundraiser in you to spark your donors to give. How should you do that? Well first, it starts with a strong strategic annual giving plan.

By now, most fundraisers have a strategic annual giving plan, but there is always time to make adjustments and improvements.

Strengthen your annual giving plan by asking yourself these questions:

  • How does this year’s annual giving plan differ from our plan last year? Regardless of if you had the best year yet, or a year that needs improvement, you should always try to do something a little different.
    • Yes, if you had the best year to date, continue doing what you’re doing. However, what’s next? How can you keep that stamina up? It’s all about thinking ahead and continuing to have that donor-mindset at the forefront of your initiatives.
    • If you had a year that needs major improvement, try something completely new – do some testing and analysis and determine what had the best results. For example, maybe it was a self-mailer over an 8.5×11″ letter, a Facebook ad over a LinkedIn ad, a phone call over an email. Whatever it may be, it’s important to analyze what your donors respond to. Keep in mind that it can take multiple touchpoints before a donor takes action. Ensure that you are communicating with them on all channels to reach them where they are.
  • Did we draft a schedule for initiatives this year? Laying out what the initiative is, who will be targeted, what the goal is, and the timeframe of execution is critical to your team’s success. It not only confirms that everyone is on the same page, but it also helps you stay on track with initiatives. Sometimes, things change. Having a schedule helps you see what adjustments might need to be made if something arises. This central resources can allow your team to be concise, consistent, and focused.
  • How did we use personalization in appeals? Donors expect a personal touch now more than ever. How did you use variable data to personalize the ask? How was the data segmented to properly target the right people with the right message? Instead of sending everyone the same message with the same imagery, try to show donors that you know what’s important to them. If the donor connects with the institution on a personal level, they will be more inclined to donate because they start building an affinity to it.

Fundraising and building relationships take a lot of time and valuable resources. We understand that here at BCG Connect and can help alleviate that feeling of overwhelmingness and take a portion off your plate. As creative direct marketing experts who know best practices in the education, healthcare, and nonprofit markets, we act as an extension of your team to be your direct marketing resource.

For more than a decade, we have been successful in partnering with our clients to create a personalized, custom approach to their marketing and fundraising initiatives, targeting the right people with an effective message, to reach their prospective and current donors. Let us help you!

The long and winding road to annual giving success starts with developing an annual fund plan. Annual giving is complex and having a roadmap ahead of time allows you to prepare for the possible speed bumps and detours. Your road to annual giving success begins today for the next fiscal year – it’s time to start planning!

A strong annual fund campaign requires extensive and comprehensive efforts that organizations need to plan well in advance. By doing this, annual fund objectives are clear, concise, and compelling as well as more apt to be strategically aligned throughout the fiscal year. However, according to Annual Giving Network’s 2016 Report, 67% said that they do not typically have a plan in place prior to the start of a new fiscal year.

Take a step back for a moment and think, “Did my annual fund have a documented, thought-out plan for FY’17?”

If your answer is, “Yes, it did!” – wonderful! How are you going to improve it for FY’18? It’s imperative to use as much data as you have gathered to determine what worked, what didn’t work, and how the plan can be improved. Some questions you might want to ask yourself:

  • Did I have a campaign across multiple channels (direct mail, email appeals, a coordinated social media campaign, and a telephone push)?
  • Did I segment the data to target the right people with the right message?
  • Did I thank donors for their previous donation and ask for another small gift at the same time?
  • Could I have incorporated 2 annual giving days instead of 1?
  • Should I have implemented a challenge day?
  • Could I have leveraged any yearly events to push annual giving (i.e. Pi Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, March Madness, the Organization’s Founding Year)?
  • Did I tell donors how their donation impacted the organization?

There is always room for improvement by implementing innovative and creative ideas to your program.

If your answer is, “No, my annual fund didn’t have a strategic plan,” then you’re in luck – there is always time to put a plan in place. You might be thinking, “Where do I start? When do I start? What do I include in this plan?” Before summer, you should ideally have your approved plan in place ready to be executed for FY’18. This would put you at the perfect spot to be organized for the year and ready to strategically get donations in. Here are some guiding questions to fuel your annual giving campaign for your road trip to success:

  1. What is the theme of your annual fund? – by having a thought-out, annual theme, the annual fund can have a more succinct, consistent message upon multiple touchpoints.
  2. Do your social media pushes have consistent branding with your annual fund campaign? – as more campaigns implement social media, it’s crucial to have consistent branding across channels to connect all of the pieces for donors.
  3. Are there any yearly events that you want to include in your annual fund campaign? – if you’re focused on a certain theme for the year, you might want to consider incorporating certain events/holidays into your campaign. For example, if the founding year for your institution was 1718, you might want to implement a Giving Day on January 7, 2018 (1/7/18). If you have a theme of focusing on different departments throughout the year, you might want to focus on athletics in March and hold a March Madness bracket challenge. If you’re focusing on raising funds for a new math center, you might want to hold a giving day on Pi Day, March 14th (3.14).
  4. How will you segment your data? – knowing who your donors are helps with segmenting data as you want to ensure you are targeting the right people with the right message at the right time. Personalizing asks based on specific donor interests increases your chances of their donation.
  5. Did you thank your donors? – donor retention is a major factor of your annual fund. Maintain your relationships by thanking your donors and let them know how their gift impacted the organization! When they feel appreciated, they are more inclined to continue contributing to the fund in the future.
  6. How did the campaign do and how are you going to improve it next year? – during your current campaign, you should start thinking about next year’s campaign. Ask yourself questions like, “Should we do this strategy next year? Which approach was most successful? Which approach did not perform as we had hoped? Is there anything going on in the environment that might have impacted positive or negative results for our campaign?” By having improvement at the forefront of your mind, annual fund campaigns are more likely to succeed even more.

An annual fund campaign needs to be kept vibrant, updated, and innovative. These efforts need to be revisited and monitored constantly to ensure the annual fund is meeting or exceeding expectations. In order for aligned initiatives to be effective, goals need to be set and the prior year’s campaign needs to be evaluated at the completion of the campaign. When evaluating the campaign, it’s important to take into consideration the dollars given, participation rates, average gifts, and cost-per-dollar-raised. This will aid in establishing a benchmark that will be beneficial in setting realistic goals.

What do you think would happen if donors heard from you consistently the first year throughout the year and only one time the year after that because an annual plan wasn’t implemented? The purpose of an effective annual fund plan is to establish consistent giving habits in your donors. If they feel as though you only reach out when there is a crisis or when there is a sudden need, they won’t feel the emotional connection as they would if they had received consistent outreach explaining how they can make an impact. Retaining donors is a key contributing factor to developing and executing an annual fund plan.

As a proud partner with our clients, BCG Connect has worked strategically with numerous organizations to develop and improve their annual fund marketing campaigns. Some of the most successful campaigns were planned well in advance of the start of the fiscal year. If your goal is to work with a partner that can help develop a strategic, impactful annual fund marketing program, connect with us to learn how BCG Connect can help you!