Thanksgiving. Giving Tuesday. Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza. Year-End. Each of these provide opportunities – and challenges – for fundraisers.

Yes, there’s the challenge of scheduling everything so you don’t overwhelm your donors or your team. But one of the challenges we often forget when we view each project as a separate unit is the overall message we are conveying. Are we expressing our ongoing need while also telling the donor he or she really had an impact this year?

Before you are consumed by the year-end rush, here are a few steps to make sure your donors end the year feeling great about being a supporter of your worthwhile cause.

  1. Write down the key messages you want your donors to hear before midnight on December 31.
  2. Schedule out your communications for the last six to eight weeks of the year, noting which one(s) go to what groups of donors.
  3. Don’t forget to schedule year-end calls to say “thank you” to key donors, also.
  4. Plan which messages will go in which communications so you are communicating the key ones to each group.
  5. Review the calendar by group to make sure you aren’t overloading your best donors with near-constant messaging. This is especially easy to do at year-end with emails. The danger is getting relegated to your supporter’s permanently blocked list, simply because they can’t deal with the barrage of emails at year-end. Unfortunately, this blocking may not be lifted after the holidays, so don’t risk it!
  6. Start now to request and collect the stories, photos and facts you’re going to need to get the message out in the most compelling manner.
  7. Make sure there is someone trained to back up keys players in the process. While this may not be possible for everyone, at least have more than one person who can do the time-critical tasks like sending an email or pulling a mailing list from your donor management system.

Donors to nonprofit organizations are generally quite forgiving of what they perceive as missteps, but that’s not a reason to fail to do the best planning so we give them more to celebrate and less to forgive.