Off-Season Fundraising Ideas that Deepen Donor Loyalty

9 Things Mid-size and Small Nonprofits Can Do the Rest of the Year

Image by moonietunes from Pixabay

If you’re like most nonprofits, your best months for fundraising come at the end of the year.

Other times of the year could be called the off-season for fundraising – times when fewer people give, and it’s just harder to motivate gifts on a scale that it might seem like you need to justify the investment.

According to a non-scientific poll, most nonprofits consider January, February, and the summer months of June through August to be the worst months for fundraising, with July and August the worst.

So what can small and mid-size nonprofits do during these vast stretches of the year? What can you do to turn deserts into green valleys?

1. Do a Thank You Campaign

You can never thank your donors too often. Here are 16 ways to thank your donors.

In the slow months, don’t focus as much about asking for money. Instead, thank the people who have already given. Types of thank you campaigns for specific segments of donors include:

• Thank you letter and email for your recurring donors
• Phone calls to major and mid-level donors, and also recurring donors
• January thank you calls to first-time donors from the end of year season

Thanking donors deepens loyalty and lets them know how much you appreciate them, and reminds them of the irreplaceable role they play in the work of your nonprofit. And, some people give after being thanked, so you might get some new donations too.

2. Send a Nurture Campaign

A nurture campaign is like a thank you campaign, except it focuses more on what’s happening right now. This kind of campaign is the place to send progress updates, recent impact stories showing how the donor’s support is making a difference, and other updates.

Image by truthseeker08 from Pixabay

Email is especially good for this. You don’t ask for money in these emails. You just give them great content that they will be happy to read. Often, people who sign up for email lists are promised updates and stories of impact. And yet, most of the emails they receive just ask for money. But you promised them updates, and they really do want them!

Your off-season is the perfect time to send email updates that don’t ask for any money.

3. Make a Soft Ask

A soft ask would be combined with a nurture campaign. Basically, you send the same email you would have sent in the nurture campaign, but include just one quick sentence at the end with a donate button telling people that if they want to give, here’s how.

In other words, the update they’ve just read speaks for itself, but you’re not using that news specifically to then ask for money. So, you’re not doing calls to action like “Help feed 20 more people just like Carla.” You just give the update, and then make a quick general ask at the end.

4. Create 1-2 Focused Fundraising Campaigns

Set a goal for spring or summer to meet a specific goal or need.

Maybe you want to get 25 more recurring donors. Maybe you want to fund a specific campaign. Maybe you’ve gotten a matching grant and want to use it during a slow month.

Whatever it might be, you can create a limited-time fundraising campaign in an off-season month, and you will get some response. You could build it around a holiday or special date that’s relevant to your organization. Maybe your city or state has an event going on that you can link up with in some way, such as a booth at a local fair or farmer’s market.

5. Reach Out to Your Mid-Level and Major Donors

If you’re not accustomed to doing this, the off-season is the time to start. Reach out to your larger donors and talk to them. Get to know them. Find out how they’re feeling about supporting your organization.

Ask them if they’re interested in giving a matching grant you can use in your end of year campaigns or at your next fundraising event.

6. Run a Smaller Event with a Different Focus

Besides your annual auction, if you have one, try creating a smaller event that gets people interacting with your staff, your volunteers, perhaps your beneficiaries, and each other. Build community. You might raise a little money too, but most of the time these events don’t raise a ton.

Image by Brett Hondow from Pixabay

The goal is more to bond people more personally to your organization and the people their support affects. Some good mini-event ideas include:

• Saturday brunch or evening social
• Volunteer thank you party
• Monthly donor party
• Tours of your facilities
• Work party – outdoor or indoor, depending on the need
• Sports events like golf, ping pong, or softball tournaments

One nonprofit I support once had a Super Bowl party at a local restaurant, because the home team was playing in the game. What a fun and easy way for a small nonprofit to raise a little money, get out in the community, and connect with more people!

7. Plan a Donor Trip

Donor trips are a superb way to forge deep and lifelong bonds with a small group of donors, including new donors.

You might benefit from working with a donor trip specialist such as Philanthropy Without Borders, who can help you plan your trip so everyone – you, the donors, and the people and places you’ll be visiting – get the most out of it.

8. Write Your Blogs for the Year and Push Them Out on Ad Grants

When you’re in the heat of marketing your main fundraising event, or deep in your end of year campaigns, it’s hard to find room for seemingly less important tasks like writing blogs and increasing your reach using Google Ad Grants.

But your new donor acquisition pipelines are essential to long term growth and stability. Don’t neglect them!

Use the slower times in the other months to write a large batch of blogs all at once. If you could publish just one blog per month for the year, you’ll be doing far better than the great majority of nonprofits at extending your digital reach and attracting new supporters you’d never find any other way.

But writing one blog per month is a lot harder than writing 12 blogs over a few days all in one week.

Get your topics together, and put your writers to work pounding these out and finalizing them. Then, you can roll them out each month the rest of the year.

This also gives you a consistent source of new content to push on social media and over email. And, you can create new ads in Google Ad Grants for each article, and use them to build your email list.

Here’s a video course I created on how to build your email list using Ad Grants.

It costs $97 for everyone else, but if you reach out to me using this contact page, I will send you a coupon code that will save you 60%.

9. Consistency, Consistency, Consistency

The most important principle underlying all of these ideas is consistent communication.

Especially small nonprofits, but also many mid-size ones (I’m on your lists – I know you haven’t sent me anything for months!), seem to just drop off the face of the earth for months at a time. And then all of a sudden, when the end of the year or their annual event rolls around again, I hear from them again.

Don’t do that.

Stay in touch. Keep a consistent flow of communication going out to your email list, social media followers, and other supporters.

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