Resources Home

Urgency vs. Competition in End of Year Campaign

Published by Jeff Giddens

When to start end of year campaign

Urgency increases conversion – it’s been proven by testing over and over again.

Most nonprofits know this because they see their greatest fundraising results come in the last few days of December, when the midnight deadline looms large.

So if the end is already decided – if you’re going to leverage the natural urgency of the end of year campaign – what else can you do?

Have you considered testing when you start your year-end campaign?

Our research found that most nonprofits don’t start fundraising until halfway through the month. In fact, exactly half of the organizations surveyed started their end of year campaign exactly halfway through the month.

[This insight comes from Next After’s exclusive study of 17,263 emails from 151 nonprofit organizations 5 Ways to Cut Through the Clutter.]

So which should you rely on this year? Being early or being urgent?

Why not both?

You know how the campaign is going to end. Getting started early could give you a head start with your donors before the torrent of emails begins at mid month.

It’s simple. Give it a try.

When to start a year end campaign

Be sure to download your copy of 5 Ways to Cut Through the Clutter to see four more simple tests you could run this year.

Feel free to share this report with others who may benefit. We send our latest research directly to our subscribers before releasing it to the public, but once it’s out, we want to share. Will you help us spread the word?

end of year campaign

P.S. Here’s a shocking discovery our data revealed: 17% of the organizations we surveyed (151 total, 100 of which are in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400) didn’t send an appeal all month. 

If you want to raise more money at the end of the year, you have to ask!

P.S.S The other shocking stat was that only 20% of organizations in the study particpated in GivingTuesday yet that day had the most volume of email sent.

Published by Jeff Giddens

Jeff Giddens is President of NextAfter.

,