3 things you can do now for year-end fundraising

It seems like just last week we were shivering through a cold winter-spring (oh wait, it was). But guess what? By early June, many nonprofits are already starting to plan for year-end fundraising season—and by fall, they’re finalizing plans and getting campaigns rolling. Here’s three things you can do now to help you be ready when September rolls around:

Get into the year-round groove. Farra’s webinar about keeping your donors engaged year-round shares some great tools and tactics you can use to keep the donor love alive all summer (and year) long, and make it easier to ask for money downstream. The free recording‘s an hour long, but she also wrote a blog post on the topic if you’ve only got a few minutes. She’s also giving a free webinar on June 16 that will dig into some more year-end fun.

Tune up your fundraising machine. Sarah’s laundry list of 7 ways to tune up your fundraising this summer offers a great checklist. In particular, thinking about whether and how you’ll segment differently and test this year is a good practice in the summer months. Liz’s post on laying the groundwork for segmenting is a helpful read.

Check up on your brand. Your year-end fundraising campaign should be an experience of your organizational brand—and if your overall brand and communications are in a rough place, it’s much harder to effectively use it to fundraise. This handy infographic helps you answer: Is it time to rebrand? Even if it’s not time for an overhaul, now can be a good time to give it a quick check-up using Farra’s four steps.  

And, of course…

Get excited!