In January of last year I wrote up a quick summary on how some of our clients’ end-of-year online fundraising campaigns did vs. the prior year, and I thought it’d be nice to repeat the exercise to see how nonprofits fared in 2011.

The results below come from aggregate data from 14 organizations we work with – a big thanks to them for letting us include their data in this post. These aren’t necessarily the same organizations we included in our write-up last year; this analysis compares two years of data for these 14 groups.

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Are you getting ready to launch your year-end fundraising campaign? Before you hit send, make sure you’ve read these posts with our end of year fundraising tips:

• If you need a refresher on the big picture strategy for your campaign, like why you should send email appeals, when to send them, and what to say, then check out this recording of the End of Year fundraising webinar we held last month with Salsa Labs!
• Still stuck on what to say in your emails to supporters? Here’s one tip you should definitely use.
• Don’t reinvent the wheel: find out what tests and tactics worked for our clients in 2010 and 2009.

Um, wow! Over 300 people tuned in to the End of Year Fundraising webinar we gave with Salsa Labs last week.

But if you or your colleagues missed it, never fear, you can still get in on our timely year-end fundraising tips by downloading presentation slides here or viewing the video presentation below.

Our own Jonathan Benton covered the following:

1. Why you should be fundraising at the end of the year (did you know that some nonprofits raise as much as 50% of their revenue for the year in December?!);
2. How many emails you should send, what you should say in them, and when you should send them;
3. How to optimize your website and your donation forms (with specific instructions for Salsa users); and
4. New things you can try to take your end of year campaign to the next level.

Want to see what you missed? Click here to download the presentation slides.

Feel free to share it with any of your colleagues who couldn’t make it last Tuesday and don’t forget to check out our new tip for writing effective year-end appeals or our round-up of what worked well at year-end in 2010.

Get out the party hats and champagne – it’s time to write for end of year!

Most nonprofits receive a huge percentage of total yearly donations in the month of December. In fact, our 5th Benchmarks Study noted that international relief groups raise 50% of their income at the end of the year.

What’s more, nonprofits are raising more and more money online every year. Between 2009 and 2010, online fundraising revenue grew overall by 14%. So there’s also more pressure – and greater competition – than ever before, and making the most of the end-of-year opportunity means sending the best, most compelling email appeals you can. (No pressure though.)

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Are you ready for the year-end fundraising push? Before you finalize your plan, you may want to take a look at some of our findings from the 2010 end-of-year season.

You’ll find the post we published last January below. And if you have any questions, don’t forget to join us on Tuesday, November 15 for our free webinar on end-of-year fundraising – just RSVP here.

Enjoy!
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