Dusty Rhodes “Finishing 2024 Strong in the Red Zone of Fundraising!”
We are a month away from Election Day, two months away from Giving Tuesday, and about 3 months away from year end. All of this will generate tens of millions of fundraising appeals by nearly 1.5 million nonprofits across every platform imaginable. It’s all for good causes, but it makes for more cluttered spaces you must penetrate at this critical time of year. Add to that Thanksgiving, Christmas, wrapping up a fall fundraising season, staff trying to wedge in vacation time, and now we have hurricane Helene relief efforts, with possibly another destructive hurricane Milton arriving in days. A season known for busyness just got busier for donor-supported organizations.
The clutter will be challenging, and yet the next couple of months can still be your most fruitful fundraising time of the year depending on your execution! Similar to football’s ‘red zone’ – the final 20 yards of a drive to the goal line when execution must be precise to score – we are approaching the fundraising ‘red zone,’ the final weeks of closing in on a financial goal when execution can make the difference between a well-funded mission ready for greater impact or just maintaining operations.
Assuming you have a comprehensive year end strategy in place by now, keep reading here and in the upcoming November and December articles for timely considerations. In the unlikely event you’ve never viewed year end as a unique fundraising opportunity, consider these statistics which on average hold true for most nonprofits including some Christian radio stations:
• 30% of all annual donations happen in December. In Christian radio I’ve seen nearly 40% in the last 6-7 weeks of the year.
• Donors giving their largest gift of the year usually give them between mid-November and December 31st.
• December 30th and 31st are historically the biggest online giving days of the year.
• 12% of all annual giving can happen in the last 3 days of the year.
To raise all the donations you can, you need to try and cover all your bases (did I just mix sports metaphors?). Plan or no plan, you may find helpful thoughts here to inform some tweaking to help ensure you are considering all angles for the best chance to reach your goals in this critical fundraising red zone.
It’s the fundraising ‘red zone,’ closing in on year end goals when execution can make the difference between a well-funded mission ready for greater impact or just maintaining operations.
Hurricane Help
Many commendable efforts by Christian media remain in play, even while some are suffering their own power outages or suspending their own fundraising needs to help victims of Hurricane Helene. Services include broadcasting vital information, raising cash donations, and partnering with others to provide basics like hot showers, laundry services, and even mental health scholarships!
In a recent (unscientific) Christian radio poll on Facebook 33% reported they conducted an add-on appeal to their station fundraiser, another 33% said they pointed listeners to one specific organization helping victims, and a final third was giving listeners multiple options to choose from to help.
Actions to Consider
• With another hurricane forecasted to hit the southeast this week, hopefully this data helps inform your next decisions. If it was important to your mission to prioritize what you did post-Helene, will that priority remain post-Milton?
Election Impact
Of all the year end activities on the calendar listed earlier, I think the least of your concerns can be election ‘interference’ to your fundraising results.
Last August Dunham + Company’s Founder/Chairman Rick Dunham did a great job making the case using their own research from presidential years 2016 and 2020 to explain in a HisAir article why he believes it is ‘extremely unlikely’ election giving will negatively impact donors giving elsewhere [to your mission].
Only about 30% of Americans ever make political donations (1) and, of those who do, the majority of them are male (2). That can also be good news for Christian radio whose donors tend to lean female!
Actions to Consider
• If you subscribe to a wealth screen service, they typically provide the political giving history of donors already in your database. You can check to see which of those political donors, if any, gave to you last year (non-election year) but have not given yet this year (election year). Contact them appropriately to try and keep them engaged financially before year end.
• Election spending is expected to be 30% higher this year vs. the 2020 election season, and election messaging tends to double-down on tactical urgency this time of year.(3) This will create more ‘noise’ you must push through by being innovative and creative but still in alignment with your mission. Also carefully weigh which aspects of your mission deserve more urgent attention of donors and appropriately highlight them between now and year end.
In the end, be as laser focused and crystal clear as you can in all your messaging so there is no confusion as to what your mission is trying to accomplish, how someone can partner with you by their gift to change more lives and communities, and then invite them in compelling ways to give…but especially to give now!
1 71% of Americans Have Never Donated to Political Campaign | LendingTree
2 Fewer Americans to Make Political Donations in 2024 | LendingTree
3 Unlocking Fundraising Success in an Election Year; Classy
Dusty Rhodes is a strategic executive leader who works alongside mission-based organizations to create customized visionary strategic plans and the funding models to pay for them for sustainable revenue growth. His accomplishments across 30+ years in Christian media and the nonprofit sectors have been while serving in mid-level management, executive and senior executive leadership positions. Contact Dusty: DustyRhodes777@Outlook.com and www.LinkedIn.com/in/DustyRhodes777
