Plan and Succeed: Year End Giving

Wait – Year End Giving? It’s only October! Yes, that is correct – if you start planning now, you will have a successful year end giving appeal. We have other blog posts on Year End Giving, so feel free to check them out as well.

Start Early and Think Ahead

• 1/3 of charitable gifts are given in December. This is a good opportunity to ask when people are thinking about giving. Do you have a Spring pledge drive? All the more reason to ask now to contributions to close out the calendar year.
• People are trying to fulfill a giving goal for the year, need to find allocations for IRA Required Minimum Distributions, or to offset a financial gain with charitable gifts toward their 2023 tax filing.
• Pull together a group of folks, decide on some key messages, put together a timeline for the project, decide what formats you are going to use, and request a current list of the household you will approach

Think Holiday Letter

• Think about the holiday letters that you receive. What are the qualities of the best ones? The dull or unappealing ones?
• Make yours warm & personal; you are not writing a business letter to people who you do not know. You are writing to your chosen family.
• Make it engaging, tell a real story, give people’s names and show some pictures. People love to hear about people they know well and care about. Have a respected member write about why they give.
• Talk about why their gift makes a difference. What impact does the congregation have, that people are contributing to. Talk about what was achieved in 2023 and what is planned for 2024.

Plan for Two Audiences

• You now have in-person and virtual congregants. You have a good idea of how to engage and inspire people who attend in person on Sunday (and other times) and who can hold a handout. Now you also need to engage and inspire people who join you virtually. The congregation is valuable to them and they want to contribute too!

Integrate Your Communication

• Consider sending postal letters, making a video, doing a special email blast, create a new page on your website and perhaps feature it on the Homepage, send a text out from your database, and make Sunday announcements. You may not be able to, or want to, do all of these things. You are better off doing fewer things well than too many things poorly. This is where your skillful planning comes in.
• Align with worship theme and other elements of congregational life. When you tie in stewardship to other areas it makes more sense and resonates more with people

Give Options

• Offer ways to give. These are centered in your member’s financial lives like transferring appreciated stock, a grant from a Donor Advised Fund, or Required Minimum Distributions from an IRA or 401(K).
• Provide online giving options. These are centered on your congregation’s systems for donations like on your website, using your database (Realm, Breeze, etc.), with Paypal, etc. People can transfer or have a check written by their bank, or make a contribution at the office with their charge card. People can even still write checks or give cash! Have lots of options.

Make a Request

• Don’t beat around the bush or be indirect. Ask people to contribute, be generous, and join the other givers in the congregation.
• Give a call to action with a due date. Ask people to do it and let them know when to have it done. The obvious due date (for IRS purposes) is December 31, but the holidays are busy times for people, and this is not a party activity. Consider a due date 3 or 4 days before the end of the year, then you can send a last minute reminder.

Keep Track and Report Results

• Keeping track of your year end request results from year to year will help you know what worked better and what did not, so you can improve over time.
• Also, let the congregation know the results and the difference they will make – this is something to celebrate in the new year.