Happy Sunday, Boosters - Idalmy here!

🏃🏽‍♀️ It's marathon season, and we don't mean the 26.2-mile kind. We mean year-end fundraising, the stretch from October planning through the final push on December 31 that nonprofit news organizations and others with reader-revenue programs count on for a big share of their annual giving.

December is when people give, and not only because December 31 is the last day a gift counts toward that year's taxes. It's the season when people are already in a generous frame of mind. They're thinking about the people and places that matter to them, they're being asked by every cause they care about, and they're deciding where their support should go. For readers who rely on your reporting, a year-end gift is how they say thank you for what you've done and that they want you around next year. Nonprofits raise about 37% of their online revenue in December and 10% of the year's total in the last week alone.

Your job over the next ten weeks is to be ready for that moment: to have asked for the match, thanked the people who already gave, sorted your list, written the emails and tested the donate page, so that when audiences are ready to give, nothing gets in the way. We've run this season alongside small shops and big, established nonprofits, and we think about it in five phases.

Two things reliably move money at year-end: a match and a deadline. The deadline is built into the calendar, but a match has to be arranged, and it's worth the effort because it doubles the value of every reader's gift and gives people a concrete reason to act now. The funders who provide one, usually a major donor, a community foundation or a local business, need time to think it over, which is why this is an October conversation. NewsMatch participants lined up $8.9 million in local matches last year from more than 1,200 funders they found themselves, and most of those relationships started with someone simply asking.

The first message of the season should be a thank-you, with no ask attached. Readers who only hear from you when you want money will stop opening your emails. A no-ask message in November is how you earn the ones you'll send in December.

November is also when you segment your email list, with two segments or ten, depending on what your tools and time allow. A lapsed donor wants to know their last gift mattered, a first-time donor wants to hear what it’s paid for since, and a loyal reader who’s never given mostly needs to be asked. Your members and monthly donors should hear from you too, with thanks first and an invitation to do a little more if they can.

Giving Tuesday is the biggest single day of online giving in the United States, about $4 billion last year across every kind of cause, and readers expect to be asked. That’s why so many news organizations choose it as the day they launch. If you’ve secured matching funds in the fall, this is when you announce them, and the match is what gives the first appeal its pull: a reader who gives $50 on this day sees it become $100, and that’s a reason to give now rather than put it off. Then there’s a running total to report the next morning, which gives you something to say in every email that follows, and that’s how a campaign builds momentum from its first day.

ABOUT DONOR-ADVISED FUNDS

The job of December is to keep readers paying attention without wearing them out, so that the final push lands with people who are ready for it. That's a balance. Too quiet and the campaign disappears into the holidays; too loud and people tune out before the days that matter most. One appeal a week is about right, each from a different person on your team so the campaign has more than one voice, and a running total somewhere readers can see it, because people give to campaigns that look like they're working.

One appeal a week, each from a different person on your team, built around one story and the match.

January is for stewardship and onboarding. Some of the people who gave in December have been supporting you for years and some gave for the first time, and all of them are waiting to hear what their gift made possible. A prompt thank-you, a tax letter where one is due, and a short welcome series for new donors is how someone goes from giving once to feeling like part of your work.

Email me at [email protected] for the checklist or to set up a time to chat.