Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we look at tips to ensure a successful GivingTuesday. Plus, we dig into ways nonprofits can reach out to donors amid a noisy election.

I’m Jie Jenny Zou, fundraising reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Gearing up for GivingTuesday

GivingTuesday is December 3, just a few weeks away, writes my colleague Rasheeda Childress. For many nonprofits, it’s one of the biggest giving-day campaigns for the year and often kicks off their year-end fundraising season.

While some fundraisers start planning for GivingTuesday as early as April, now is not too late if you haven’t started, according to fundraisers and consultants who have done well raising money on that day. The Chronicle talked to these experts, who shared key tips on how your organization can maximize its chances of success on this big fundraising day.

Giving Tuesday

Band together.

GivingTuesday may feel like a solitary undertaking, but talking to other nonprofits about what they’re doing can help, says Lisa Schillace, national director of #iGiveCatholic, a coalition of Catholic nonprofits that band together to encourage donations on GivingTuesday. Schillace runs meetings that facilitate idea sharing among the participating groups.

“I see our role as providing space for shared learning, shared inspiration — what we call #HolyPlagiarism,” she says. “If somebody is doing something great in Beloit, Kan., and I want to do it in Richmond, Va., I can. This is a unique opportunity to be able to collect the wisdom of our community and share information.”

Share Omaha gathers more than 600 nonprofits to participate in a GivingTuesday campaign. The initiative puts together logos and branding and serves as a clearinghouse for donors who want to give to Omaha-area charities on GivingTuesday. Donors can give to their favorite charity, but they’re also encouraged to donate to other charities in a cause, with options to give to as many as 10 nonprofits via the campaign site.

Organizations can also join forces on a smaller scale. In 2022, the Chronicle reported that the Coral Springs Museum of Art, in Florida, partnered with the nearby Sawgrass Nature Center and Wildlife Hospital for a joint Bob Ross-inspired painting event on GivingTuesday.

Start early, when possible.

Give your organization time to get together all the GivingTuesday marketing material. That includes social-media branding and logos, advertisements, and language for emails and direct-mail appeals.

Schillace brought together the Catholic charities that want to participate in this year’s event way back in April to share ideas. She thinks that was a bit too early — they’re going to push it to May next year. But considering options early is helpful, she says.

For more tips on how to prepare for GivingTuesday, read Rasheeda’s full story.

Need to Know

— Harry Lynch, CEO of Sanky Communications, on nonprofit messaging to cut through a noisy election year.

Recent research findings challenge the long-held belief that elections negatively impact overall charitable giving by drowning out nonprofits in favor of political campaigns, I reported recently. Survey data actually found that younger and more diverse donors are planning to ramp up their gifts to charities this year.

The survey, conducted in August by fundraising and advertising consultancy Blue State, was a follow-up to an earlier round of research in April. Blue State clients include nonprofits like Oxfam America and political campaigns. The firm was founded by former staffers of Democrat Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.

“We’re in the midst of a sea change of opportunity,” said Chris Maddocks, senior vice president at Blue State. “We see that BIPOC and younger donors are really signaling — much more than other cohorts — an intent to give and intent to give more.”

Compared with April, those surveyed in August were overall more likely to be planning to donate to a cause or campaign. In August, 66 percent of respondents said they planned to donate to a charity soon, up from 42 percent in April with the largest increase coming from those ages 25 to 34.

Donors of color and those under 45 were also more likely to say they would increase their gifts. Twenty-seven percent of donors of color said they planned to raise their charitable donations compared with 14 percent of white donors.

Conventional wisdom for nonprofits during election years has been to avoid inundating prospective donors in the days before and after the election, when attention spans are limited, said Harry Lynch, CEO of Sanky Communications. But Lynch noted that the country’s increased political polarization coupled with greater uncertainty presents new challenges.

“It is different this year; it’s much more complicated to figure out what to do for a number of reasons,” said Lynch. A contested election could take weeks or even months to sort out, he noted, making it important to plan ahead and “spread the risk” by avoiding a “single, all-important” fundraising drive in the immediate days after the election.

For more tips on how to break through to donors amid a turbulent election year, read the full story.

Plus ...

• How to Boost Planned Giving — and Build a Healthy Future for Your Nonprofit. Planned giving is booming even as overall charitable support is on the decline, my colleague M.J. Prest reports. Donors gave $42.7 billion through bequests in 2023, and that figure is expected to keep growing as Baby Boomers reach their golden years and older Gen Xers approach retirement age.

  Yet not all nonprofits have active legacy-giving programs in place; instead they favor fundraising for the present over the future. That’s a huge missed opportunity, experts say. Most bequests and other planned gifts are unrestricted, so securing these contributions is an excellent way to build a healthy future for your nonprofit. Plus, cultivating legacy donors helps strengthen ties with loyal supporters and increase revenue in the near-term. For more on how to boost planned giving, read the entire story.
  

Gift of the Week

Gilbert Omenn and Martha Darling gave $25 million to support the new Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan Medical School. The funding is aimed at strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and clinical investigators as well as artificial intelligence-driven research programs.

Dr. Omenn is the university’s Harold T. Shapiro Distinguished University Professor of Medicine. Darling was a senior manager at Boeing, a vice president at Seattle-First National Bank, and executive director of the Washington Business Roundtable’s Education Study.

For other notable gifts this week, read my colleague Maria Di Mento’s Gifts Roundup column. To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly and has data going back to 2000.

Advice and Opinion

What to Say on November 6 and How to Say It. Here’s how to get your message across and bring people together after the election.

Are Fundraisers to Blame for the Giving Crisis? The fundraising powerbrokers at the Generosity Commission overlook their own role in alienating everyday donors.

What We’re Reading

New Report Says Charities Are Underinvesting in Fundraising Staff. New research suggests that charities are not properly supporting their fundraising staff, according to an article in Civil Society, a news site that covers U.K. nonprofits. Nearly half of the 339 fundraising professionals surveyed said they did not have a plan in place to foster their development skills. Only 7 percent of respondents said they thought their learning needs could be met within the next year on the job.

Those without any training support were ten times more likely to say they planned to leave their jobs within the next year while those with access to learning opportunities reported higher levels of job satisfaction. While the study focused on U.K. charities, similar implications could apply to U.S. nonprofits, which have faced similar issues in the fundraising sector with high burnout and turnover. (Civil Society)