Year-end giving is often treated like “the big game” for fundraisers. But the right game plan, skills, and tools can help you achieve your fundraising goals all year round.
Bowl game stars: the Stanford Pine on parade, the Georgia Bulldog with his real-life counterpart, and the Oregon Duck about to take flight atop the crowd
Every December and January, college football bowl games start taking over televisions across the United States. It’s hard to keep track of just how many bowl games there are across the different NCAA divisions and playoff schedules, but fans tune in every year for the Rose Bowl, the Citrus Bowl, the Sun Bowl, Celebration Bowl, the Frisco Bowl, and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
Bowl games have a definite formula on the small screen: heart-swelling montages, inspirational pep talks from gruff-yet-dedicated coaches, improbable come-from-behind victories, tearjerking stories of perseverance, and eye-popping halftime shows that leave you wondering how someone can play the flugel horn and move in flawless unison with 149 other people in double-knit polyester.
If you’re in our business, however—building authentic brands and crafting compelling communications for nonprofits of all sizes and stripes—December brought another spectator sport entirely: keeping a close eye on how scores of fundraisers made their final pitch as the year drew to a close.
But just like the coaches who work with their staff and players for months to ensure their squad is ready to win, we know that the right high-impact giving strategies and fundamental best practices create a drumbeat of giving all year round. (And then December doesn’t need to do all the heavy lifting.)
We’re going to share some winning bowl game-inspired techniques that we recommend to everyone we work with… techniques that will help you drive better results from January to next December.
Rally your fans with an inspiring—and up-front—call to action… and then lead them on to victory
If you’ve ever attended a bowl game or watched one on TV, you know the entire experience is designed to drive excitement and enthusiasm from the jump. The fans stream in to hype music, the teams enter the field to dramatic fanfare, and the Jumbotron issues a battery of commands: Cheer! Make some noise! Get loud! Let me hear you roar! If you’re at home, the announcers beg you “not to touch that dial!”
Whether you’re in the stands or on your sofa, they make it clear that you’re in the right place, and you better not miss a moment.
If you’ve ever had to search for the giving portion of a nonprofit’s website, you’ve no doubt identified a missed opportunity we see again and again: websites that lack a crystal-clear fundraising call to action on their homepage. A tiny “Donate” / “Give” / “Support” button shouldn’t be doing all the work.
Whether you’re an independent school, a community organization, a museum, or an orchestra, you rely on contributed income—and you need to do more than hope your visitors figure out why, how, and where you want them to give.
“But they’re just clicking through an email or a social post, right? How could they get lost?” The reality is that not every donor is going to sign up to hear from you or follow you on social media, and even if they do, your emails and posts can easily get lost in digital noise.
Your website is the most critical place to get it right.
That’s why our recent website collaboration with Detroit Opera puts their fundraising call to action up front, letting their donors and prospects know that not only is their support welcomed—it’s integral: “You make it possible.”
Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ website also makes a compelling pitch for support on their main page, instead of relying on a tiny “Donate” button in a corner, or burying giving opportunities in their sub-navigation.
What’s more, they call their prospects and donors their “family”: a label that affirms donors as an essential part of their organization.
Once your donor is in the right place, your job isn’t done. Here are some more tips to ensure they don’t end up in the 50-70% who abandon donation pages without giving a cent.
Let your donors and prospects know why you want them to give.
You know your cause well, and you believe in it. But for your prospects—and even past donors—providing the “why” is important. Who do you serve? What challenge are you responding to? How is your organization uniquely positioned to make a difference? Build out your call to action with need-to-know details about the difference you make.
Start with a concise, urgency-building, and prominent call to action.
Your leadoff ask should be clear, direct, and timely. For example…
- “Give today to ensure we can continue to help our students fulfill their potential as they prepare for college.”
- “Our teams are in the field right now, working directly with families in crisis. Your support is urgently needed to continue our work.”
- “Your gift right now will enable us to touch the lives of 5,000 families across the city.”
Ensure your donation form is simple and straightforward
An action-oriented headline, a brief paragraph that details your cause, and fields for the necessary basics—name, email address, physical mailing address for billing and tax forms, and payment information—will ensure your donor knows they’ve come to the right place and the process to make their gift is trouble-free.
If you’re using an off-site donation platform, be sure to let your users know that they’re going to be directed to another website, and greet them with a clearly labeled form so they know they’re in the right place. You should also do your best to “skin” the external site / form with your brand palette and imagery, as much as you can.
Offer suggested giving amounts—and the opportunity to give on a recurring basis.
Give your donors the freedom to give any amount they want to give, but also offer some suggested gift amounts. Depending on the work you do, you can also tie a particular gift to what can be accomplished with those funds. For a youth skills-development organization, you could stipulate the cost of a particular training event or course. For an animal shelter, you could share the cost of funding meals or adoptions. This ties directly back to helping your donor feel like they’re making an impact.
Include direct contact information for your fundraising team.
If your donor experiences any sort of issue with their gift and wants to reach out, if they want to learn more about a particular cause or initiative, or if they want to have a conversation with a real human, the answer to all of the above should be “yes!” Make sure to include a contact link on your page, and on your “thank you” email.
Don’t forget to say thank you.
This might seem like a simple win, but many online donation forms neglect to inform the donor they’ve successfully submitted their form, or to thank them properly on the page or via email.
Drive excitement by sharing your impact and successes
The hype montage is a classic element of televised bowl games, sharing the biggest plays and wins for each of the teams, complete with a dizzying array of endzone dances and powerful stats—team and individual scoring records, win percentages, each team’s place in their school’s legacy… you name it. Each team is there because of hard work and dedication, and they’re not shy about telling you what they’ve achieved.
You’ve got big successes, too—and they deserve to be shared.
Impact can be measured in many ways, of course, most of which will be dependent on the work your organization does.
For our friends at Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing, their “Our Impact” page starts with bold statistics that tell the story of their work to broaden access to computing education, including the number of their growing body of school partners, and the funding they’ve provided to their member schools.
At Olin College of Engineering, their annual Impact Report features at-a-glance stats that quantify the performance of their annual giving days, including Giving Tuesday and “May the Fourth Be With You”: a Star Wars-themed giving day that fits Olin’s culture to a T.
The Wheeler School’s Impact Report provides statistics for their entire year of giving, including gifts to the Wheeler Fund, and the performance of their annual clothing sale. You’ll note that Wheeler’s impact stats don’t just speak to giving in a financial sense, but also the hours provided by their volunteers to make their philanthropic efforts happen.
Tell stories: balance institutional and human voices
If you’ve tuned into a bowl game, you know that player, coach, and fan stories are the emotional heart of every broadcast. Whether it’s a wide receiver that has overcome a serious injury to return to the starting lineup for the big game, the tireless assistant coach who has been a part of the team’s family for thirty loyal years, or the 93-year-old super-booster who has never missed a playoff appearance since their time on campus as a student, you get an indelible sense of the devotion that defines each team’s community.
Testimonials are also an incredibly powerful tool for nonprofit organizations, whether they come in the form of a video profile, a case study, or a brief quote from someone who has benefited from the organization’s work.
- Testimonials offer proof of your impact. You can tell your donors and prospects about the work you do, or you can show them—and testimonials are the way to prove that you’re achieving your mission in the lives of real people in tangible ways.
- Testimonials build emotional connection. The voices of your constituents and recipients can convey emotion that you simply can’t achieve with your institutional voice. Testimonials shift your narrative from abstract statistics and general descriptions to real, human experiences. This helps donors connect emotionally, as they can envision how their contribution will change someone’s life.
- Testimonials help your donors “see themselves” in your work: Depending on the cause, some donors give because they recognize the difference an organization made, or could have made in their own lives, or because they can imagine (or remember!) having the challenges faced by the people you serve. Instead of asking them to put themselves in someone else’s shoes through your prose, give them someone else to get to know.
Our collaborators at the MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering, and Science (MITES), MIT’s hands-on STEM program for underserved high school students, tell the stories of participants whose lives were changed by their MITES experience. Each quote links to a longer article that shares the impact MITES has had on their personal trajectory.
The Rashi School’s RISE capital campaign digital presentation features the stories of alumni-turned-student-parents to illustrate the difference a Rashi education made in their own lives, and why they’re making that same choice for their children—and financially supporting the School.
Get your team marching in the same direction
If you’ve ever marveled at a marching band performance, you know just how powerfully in sync they can be. And while they’re not taking the field to win the game, per se, their camaraderie, boundless enthusiasm, and flawless coordination gets everyone excited before and during the game. It takes a lot of patience, time, and practice, but when it works, it’s impossible to take your eyes off of it.
In our more than 45 years of working with nonprofit organizations, the Sametz Blackstone team has worked with a lot of marketing and fundraising teams across organizations of all sizes and stripes. They are some of the hardest working people we know… but they don’t always move in sync with one another, which leads to critical missed opportunities.
Marketers and fundraisers often operate in silos because they come from different mindsets, have different goals, and bring different skill sets to their work. While both are working to achieve critical goals for their nonprofit, their approaches can differ significantly, leading to conflict and a lack of collaboration—and materials that look and sound like they come from completely different organizations.
We are big believers in the notion that good marketing is also good fundraising, and that it’s important to bring these two parts of an organization together to bring their messaging into alignment. Only by doing this can you ensure that every fundraising communication starts on square two… instead of square zero. How do we do it?
- Include everyone in the brand-building conversation from the start: While marketing may “own” the responsibility of brand stewardship, everyone in the organization should play a role—and have a voice—in building a brand that works across functions and communications. When we’re brought on as brand counsel, we make a point of talking to fundraising teams during our investigation to learn about what they need the brand to do and be to fulfill their goals. That way, everyone feels more invested in the eventual verbal and visual brand language—and, as such, they’re more likely to put the new brand to work.
- Give everyone access to your brand guidelines—and use different types of communications as brand examples: Your brand system needs to be both flexible enough and distinct enough to be tuned to different types of communications. An alumni magazine isn’t the same as a viewbook, and marketing materials for your performing arts organization’s season aren’t the same as collateral for your fundraising gala. To that end, we include advancement and development pieces—including direct mail—as examples, so fundraisers understand how the brand system can be used effectively in their communications.
- Treat every communication as an opportunity to foster brand equity… and not to reinvent the wheel: It can be tempting to do something “new” when you’re starting a communications project, but a piece that feels radically different from everything else you produce can risk condemnation to the bottom of the pile or even the “circular file.”
- Include your high-level brand narrative and donor recognition in your marketing materials: It only takes a small amount of real estate up front to ensure that your high-level messaging makes an appearance in your seasonal materials. Your donors also deserve a mention and thanks for making you programming possible—and don’t forget a call to action for prospects.
- Consider how you can use the established and recognizable parts of your visual system—palette, imagery, gesture, type, composition—to create something that feels fresh without becoming foreign: As you write your pitch, consider how you can reinforce your key brand attributes and messaging in your prose. Brand guidelines should serve as both an inspiration and a checklist for every opportunity.
We know many of you are just recovering from the year-end giving rush, but the ongoing preparation and execution that results in a strong fundraising year (culminating in a strong December… your very own “bowl game”) begins now.
To that end, we’d love to help you start and finish every quarter strong. Get in touch with our team to start the conversation.