If fundraising has a number one rule, it might be that your asks should be relevant. They should be relevant to the donor, connecting to issues they care about. It should be relevant to your mission, showing what the donation will help you accomplish. And it should be relevant to what’s happening, right now, in the world.
Planning your big fundraising campaigns around calendar events (like, say, Giving Tuesday or December 31) makes this more challenging: it’s hard to plan timely content months in advance. But it used to be possible, in a broad sense, to predict what would be in the news come end-of-year fundraising season.
What do we do now, when it feels impossible to predict what might be happening in the world tomorrow, much less in the next three months? When every day seems to bring a new crisis for almost every nonprofit’s work?
How do you plan anything, much less a robust end-of-year fundraising campaign, when the entire world feels like it’s in chaos?
None of this is easy, but the answer is not to do away with planning. In fact, the better you plan, the more prepared you’ll be to deal with that chaos – as long as you plan for the unpredictable. Here are a few thoughts on how to do just that:
Start with the big picture
The bones of a good campaign won’t change, even if the details have to. Your channels, audiences and segments, and major tactics like matching gifts, can all be planned in advance. You can identify up front what assets you need: what reports and queries, what graphics, how many emails and approximate send dates. Get organized, and start filling in the details where you can.
You can identify your campaign themes in advance, too. Decide what issues to focus on based on what you know now, and develop messages that tie them together with your overall mission. Start prepping a good messaging document for your writers with high-level points about your work and your values – those things that will never change. Leave space to add the details as you get closer.
Create content with easy updates in mind
You want to start writing content and creating graphics well in advance to allow for revision and long approval processes – but as you do so, note where details might need to change. Think about ways to simplify potential updates: for instance, keep time-sensitive language in text instead of in images wherever possible, so updating it requires only a search-and-replace, not a redesign in Photoshop. Use placeholders, and keep track of where you’ve used them, so you can plug in new dates and statistics before your launch.
Be ready to be nimble
It may seem obvious, but it’s often overlooked: have a plan for adjusting your plan. What that looks like will depend on your organization and your processes, but it probably includes having a single point of contact to coordinate as situations change, defining your approval process and your approvers ahead of time, and having regular communication with everyone who needs to be aware of updates.
In the end, your fundraising is bound to be stronger the more it reflects what’s timely and in the news, even if that news is a chaotic mess. Finding the balance between advance preparation and last-minute nimbleness will help you raise more money – while keeping the effort well-coordinated and manageable for your team.