Ever feel like your team spends hours and hours discussing new ideas to optimize your year-end giving campaign, only to end up doing the exact same thing you did last year?
If you’re searching for new year-end campaign ideas that aren’t built on guesswork, you’re in luck:
Below you’ll find nine year-end fundraising strategies our recent year-end research by more than 7,500 fundraising a/b tests and 10+ years of nonprofit market research.
Then try out these ideas in your own year-end giving campaign.
1. Get Specific
One of the most common questions we receive about email fundraising is, “How long should my emails be?” Here’s the answer:
Your fundraising emails should be as long as it takes to thoroughly explain why someone should give to your organization — and no longer than that.
For example, in this experiment, we started with a really long email appeal.
And since everyone always says that “nobody reads anymore,” we wanted to know what would happen if we shortened the fundraising email by about half.
What we found was that the shortened email got more clicks, but it saw a 57% decrease in donations.
Here’s the main takeaway: It often takes much more copy than you think to thoroughly explain why someone should give to your organization.
Don’t be afraid to test long emails for your year-end fundraising appeals.
2. Use a lead magnet as a bridge to ask for a donations
It’s tempting to flip all of your communication channels to ask directly for donations during year-end fundraising.
But not everyone is going to be ready to give, especially those who have never donated before.
Instead, try mixing up your emails to include lead magnets as well as direct appeals.
Lead magnets use instant donation pages to give your donors the opportunity to give once they’ve downloaded your offer.
High level, the instant donation page acts as a confirmation page after someone submits a form. This page briefly thanks them for downloading your lead magnet but then pivots by asking for a donation, making an appeal related to the original acquisition offer.
The key here is to make sure your donation form is on this page – don’t force people to click again to get there.
Here’s an experiment that illustrates this acquisition model, and shows its effectiveness:
The direct donation ask resulted in zero donations. The content offer to the instant donation page resulted in a 209% increase in clicks and a 1.18% donation conversion rate.
Download our free Instant Donation Page Template to get started now!
3. Don’t use videos to make your year-end fundraising appeal; use them to prime donors for your appeal
People get angry when they hear this, but videos are not the most effective way to ask for a donation. At least not directly. Here’s an example:
In this case, replacing the video with text that explained the same message led to a 560% increase in donations.
And this isn’t just a one-off thing. In another experiment, removing the video from a donation page increased donations by 203%.
And in this experiment, adding a video to the donation page decreased revenue by 81%!
Results may vary, but we have seen similar outcomes frequently enough to confidently say that you should test removing the video from your donation page if you are currently using a video.
If you are not currently using a video on your donation page, but are considering adding one, we strongly recommend testing its impact on donations before rolling it out to all traffic.
If you want to (or have to) use a video in your year-end fundraising, use it as a primer to show your potential donors the value of your organization before you make your appeal like this:
- Send it in an email towards the start of your campaign without any donation ask.
- Then send a direct ask donation appeal without a video within 2 weeks.
4. Upgrade donors to recurring donors when they click to submit their gift
Recurring donors can be up to 4x more valuable than one-time donors.
And with year-end fundraising being the biggest giving season of the year, increasing the rate that donors become recurring donors could make an enormous impact on revenue.
One way we’ve found to help boost recurring giving numbers is to use a pop-up prompt on your one-time donation form. It works like this:
- Donors come to your donation page.
- They put in all their info for a one-time gift.
- They click the button to submit the donation form.
- A pop-up appears that asks the donor to upgrade their gift to recurring.
We tested this model and saw a 64% increase in recurring donations – all without affecting the overall donation conversion rate.
In other words, we had the same total number of donors, but a larger percentage of those donors were recurring donors.
In another
Year-End Idea #6 – Use a match to incentivize donors to give now
Your value proposition is the primary way to help a donor know why they should give to you. But we also want to make sure donors know why they should give to you now instead of later.
One way you can incentivize someone to give now is by using a matching challenge. Now, I know this takes some additional work to get a board member or a known major donor on board, but letting a donor know their gift can be matched can go a long way towards increasing donations.
Just look at the experiment below.
In this experiment, this organization tested using a matching opportunity in their email. The copy spent a little more time emphasizing the financial need and then offered the match as a means of helping meet that need.
This organization saw a 50% increase in donations by using a match in their email copy.
Consider how you can use a match during your year-end fundraising campaign – both in your year-end emails and on your donation page.
Year-End Idea #7 – Use a countdown clock to convey urgency in your year-end fundraising
Another tool we have to convey urgency is a countdown clock. Now, there is some research to suggest that introducing a countdown clock too early in your campaign doesn’t make much of a difference.
But using a countdown clock in the last week of your year-end fundraising campaign could increase donations.
In this experiment, the original donation page had no countdown clock. In the treatment, this organization added a countdown clock at the very top of the page.
It’s clear what kind of impact something as simple as a countdown clock can have. In this case, the countdown clock led to a 61% increase in donations.
Year-End Idea #8 – Be careful when using a progress bar and a countdown clock together
Progress bars are another great tool to use to convey a sense of urgency, as well as tap into the “bandwagon effect.” However, using a progress bar and a countdown clock together could have an unintended effect.
In the experiment below, this organization placed a progress bar and countdown clock together at the top of their donation page.
Using the progress bar and countdown clock together actually led to a 29% decrease in donations.
One reason this might be is that the progress bar and clock were implemented too early in the year-end fundraising campaign.
It’s possible that the countdown in tandem with the minimal progress towards the goal actually made people think, “Well, my gift is never going to help them meet the goal in that short of time.”
As a result, this combination of tactics may have demotivated people to give.
Year-End Idea #9 – Visually emphasize your desired gift amount
Social proof can be a very strong factor in influencing your donors to give. And one simple way to utilize social proof on your year-end donation page is to emphasize a “most popular” donation option.
One organization put this strategy to the test with a very simple design. They took the default gift option on their gift array and put text above it saying “most popular”.
Emphasizing the desired gift amount led to a 23% increase in revenue per visitor, and it actually increased mobile conversion by 44%.
*Note: Make sure that you emphasize a gift amount that is slightly higher than your average gift size. If you emphasize a lower amount, you may actually drive down your average gift size.
Year-End Idea #10 – Make sure your donors know their transaction is secure
The last tip I’ll leave you with today is this… make sure your donors know their gift is secure.
In all likelihood, you already have a secure donation page. But just having a secure donation page doesn’t mean your donors know and feel that their information is secure.
One way to emphasize that your donor’s information is secure is to visually set apart their most sensitive information (i.e. credit card fields).
In the experiment below (and many others like it), this organization wrapped their credit card fields in a little gray box. They even placed a padlock icon near the fields to communicate that it was safe to provide the credit card details.
Visually emphasizing that the donation was secure led to a 14.4% increase in donations.
Take note…these design changes didn’t make the page any more secure. They simply reminded the donor that it was safe to provide their sensitive data.
We just covered a lot of great year-end fundraising ideas. But don’t feel overwhelmed. You shouldn’t feel pressured to use all 12 ideas at once. Even using one or just a few of these ideas can have a dramatic effect on year-end revenue. But there’s only one way to know…
You have to test them out for yourself. And the best (and safest) way to prove whether or not a new fundraising idea will inspire your donors, is to A/B test that idea against a control.
Looking for year-end fundraising email examples? Check out 12 Year-End Fundraising Email Examples to Add to Your Campaign
Need more year-end fundraising ideas?
In the 4-session year-end fundraising certification course, you’ll discover new ideas to craft a successful year-end fundraising campaign for your organization based on years of research and thousands of fundraising experiments.
Activate your free access to the Year-End Fundraising course here.
Have other ideas you’d like to share? Just drop them in the comments below.
