S1:E5: Creating an Annual Digital Fundraising Program
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[00:00:00] Jeremy: What's good? What's good? It's the Jeremy Haselwood show. What's good? What's good? Let's get ready to go. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood show. Plug in, turn it up. Let's go. Hey, hey. Welcome to the Jeremy Haselwood show. Push play, let it roll. Let's go. What's good? Welcome to my show. In three, two, one. Let's go.
[00:00:31] Jeremy: Welcome to this episode of the Jeremy Haselwood show. We're about halfway through the first season. So before we get started, make sure that you tap, click or smash the follow or subscribe button, so that you'll be notified when each new episode drops not today. We're going to be talking about creating an annual digital fundraising program.
[00:00:51] Jeremy: This is something that's important for nonprofit who either aren't doing any fundraising at all. Or are only doing direct mail. So this is [00:01:00] going to be a episode where I walk you through how to set up a digital fundraising program. We're going to break down campaigns and a lot of other good stuff. Now this is something that is no longer, a nice to have.
[00:01:12] Jeremy: It's something that you need to have. This is a necessity. And when we look at the value of a multi-channel donor, looking at direct mail and digital, for example, they provide more revenue and more longevity for your nonprofit, which is why you've seen over the past several years, just this heightened awareness and heightened call to action to get more active in multiple channels outside of just direct mail or just digital.
[00:01:36] Jeremy: Now, those who are doing digital fundraising and are doing other forms of fundraising, you're actually setting yourself up for longevity. The ones that are only doing direct mail. You are the ones that will slowly die off because you're not evolving with the time and space. Now that's not to say that direct mail is going anywhere anytime soon, because it's not direct mail will be around here for a while.
[00:01:56] Jeremy: However, You are leaving money on the table. [00:02:00] If you're only doing direct mail and continue to listen to this episode, to understand why I know if you're a diehard direct mail and direct mail is working, this is what we know. This is what we do. This is all we're going to do because we've proven that it works.
[00:02:14] Jeremy: We can quantify ROI. That's great. I have zero knocks on direct mail. However, we do want to also plan for the future. And there's many ways to integrate. Digital fundraising into your direct mail program. I'm just going to walk you through one different approach. So let's go through a few different steps here just to get started. The first one is you want to look at your existing fundraising program.
[00:02:39] Jeremy: That means if you're doing direct mail, if you are doing digital, if you're doing events, et cetera, look at your existing fundraising programs. How are you generating money? For your nonprofit. You wanna identify what is working and also you want to know how are you defining it? What does working mean?
[00:02:56] Jeremy: Does your program is working because you have a higher [00:03:00] return on investment or ROI? Are you just looking at how much revenue a campaign or. Marketing channel is generating. Are you looking at how many new donors that value of a new donor, so understand and everything that I'm saying here, document this, I'm talking about it here in a podcast, but this is not meant to go in one ear and out the other.
[00:03:18] Jeremy: This is something that as we go through this podcast, take notes, circle back, put time on your calendar to go back and actually do this work. So identify what's working and how you're defining what's working. Also look at how much revenue. That each channel is generating along with the average gifts.
[00:03:35] Jeremy: So if you are doing multiple channels, what is the average gift for a direct mail donor? How much revenue is coming in? How many gifts are coming in? I do the same for digital, for events and everything like that. And then look at what is your messaging? And we can look at that from two different lenses.
[00:03:49] Jeremy: One could be, what is your overall general messaging that you're giving to your donors? I also want you to look at what is your messaging within certain [00:04:00] campaigns? And as I'm saying this, if you're asking yourself what's a campaign we're only doing year end. This is what we're going to dive a lot into further in this episode, because you should be running campaigns throughout the year.
[00:04:12] Jeremy: Not just year end or around giving Tuesday, you should be doing fundraising campaigns throughout the year. And we'll break down the elements of that shortly. But if you are doing multiple campaigns, look at what the messaging is and then understand what the messaging is in that. If you've inherited a fundraising program, that's another reason that you want to go back and do this audit and understand what your predecessors had before you and understand what that messaging was, what was effective and what wasn't. Number two.
[00:04:38] Jeremy: You want to create your fundraising goals for this year? And when we do that, we want to look at again that first step, which is understanding what we did before, how much money was made. Cost per donor, perhaps you want to identify what those metrics are and ones that I could recommend. If you don't have any metrics at all, is overall revenue. How much your fundraising [00:05:00] costs were that way you understand what the return on investment was, how much you invested. Into your fundraising.
[00:05:06] Jeremy: And when you look at what those costs are, it could be everything from printing. It could be. Supplies. It could be resources, consultants, employee salaries, things like that. So what are the costs that went into raising that money and then determine what that cost to raise a dollar would be. So you also want to look at maybe the longterm value of a donor or lifetime value.
[00:05:28] Jeremy: People call this LTV. And when you think of lifetime value, you may not have enough data within your. Donor database to really understand. If you bring on a new donor, how long that donor will stay on your file. So one is understanding. What that timeline is like. Let's say it's maybe three to five years, but understand this.
[00:05:49] Jeremy: The retention of donors for nonprofit is very small. Like you're lucky if you, half of the people that donated this year are going to donate again next year. Which is also a [00:06:00] reason why, when we talk about digital fundraising, especially integrating it with direct mail, it helps with retention because now you have a donor and multiple marketing channels and you have ways to market to this donor and keep them engaged. All right.
[00:06:13] Jeremy: So what do you want to accomplish with your fundraising goals this year? And write them out. Maybe you want to raise X amount of dollars. You want to provide X amount of services. Maybe you want to focus on the services and back into it and understand if we want to deliver this amount of services.
[00:06:26] Jeremy: This is how much money we need to. Deliver these services. If you're funding for a specific project or equipment or something like that, then maybe that's one of your fundraising goals. We're going to fund a new X. Maybe it's increasing new donors, like the number of new donors by X amount of dollars. Or maybe it's increasing the value of a donor.
[00:06:46] Jeremy: If you know that your average donor gives $87. Maybe our goal for this year is to upgrade your average gift to a hundred dollars because when you upgrade them the way that you're going to talk and the way that you're going to [00:07:00] ask money, and the way you're going to position your offers is going to be a little bit different than if you're. Targeting a campaign that's around $85.
[00:07:09] Jeremy: And that'll make a little more sense when we talk about offers and this episode. One of your goals may be to create or improve a monthly giving program. You may already have a monthly giving option, but maybe it's not a monthly giving program, or maybe you don't really talk about monthly giving very much.
[00:07:24] Jeremy: And you want to start talking about that more. So these are some goals that you may consider for fundraising for the upcoming year. And I'm saying upcoming year, because I don't know when you're going to listen to this particular episode, it may be around planning time, but your planning time for the next year, maybe eight months from now, I don't know, but file this one away.
[00:07:43] Jeremy: Save this episode and revisit it for when you are doing your annual planning. All right. The next thing you want to do is a resource audit or check. And understand several different facets that can help to support the planning and implementation of your fundraising. [00:08:00] So ask yourself, do you have the ability to email and some of this may be low hanging fruit.
[00:08:05] Jeremy: Some of these you may say yes, absolutely. But I'm just going through this list. And some of these, you may be doing some, you may not be, so identify the resources at night, identify your ability to do this. One is email also understand. Or know who is your email service provider? , do you have the ability to do web updates?
[00:08:23] Jeremy: If you need to build out new pages or a blog or donation pages, do you have that ability or that resource in house and also, who is your website hosted by? Is this a WordPress website? So understand that. Do you have the ability to do graphic design in house? If you need to create posts for your campaigns or social media posts, can you do that in house?
[00:08:44] Jeremy: If not. You can use Canva or something like that. Canva does have a nonprofit program that as of the time of this recording is still free for nonprofits. So just Google Canva for Nonprofits and get that information. Do you have the ability and the resources internally to do social media posts?
[00:08:59] Jeremy: [00:09:00] Meaning do you have someone that can write the copy, create the graphics and post them do you also have the ability to moderate your social media, meaning you're monitoring your comments, you're replying and responding to people that leave comments. The next thing is, do you have the ability and the resources to set up, optimize and manage online advertising like Facebook ads, Google ads, mainly those two, but it could also be LinkedIn ads or YouTube ads or something like that. The next one is, do you have the ability or the resources internally to manage SMS fundraising? So these, this would be a great tool to help support and provide additional amplification for your fundraising programs is if you are working in an SMS campaign, meaning like text messages.
[00:09:44] Jeremy: So think about it like this for giving Tuesday. For example, if you're sending out your emails and you have images and pop-ups on your website. You can also implement an SMS campaign to help fill out that messaging and hit people on their devices, which typically [00:10:00] have a 90 plus percent open rate on smartphones, which is why SMS is an extremely powerful tool.
[00:10:07] Jeremy: The next thing I would look at is internally. Do you have the ability to cross check with your direct mail campaign, creative and your messaging? I've seen a lot of nonprofits partner with agencies and agencies oftentimes do have someone, a creative director, somebody who will look at your direct mail assets and also look at your digital assets to make sure they have the same messaging, same themes, same colors and everything like that.
[00:10:31] Jeremy: If you're doing all of this in-house do you have this ability in house? And is there somebody, is there a role where someone is responsible for looking at the creative to ensure that your direct mail and your digital are sinking up in terms of the messaging? And I bring this up because I've seen so many instances where this hasn't been the case.
[00:10:50] Jeremy: It seems like direct mail operates in its own little area and digital operates in its own area. And oftentimes more often than not, sadly, I've seen it [00:11:00] where there's nobody to really join in bridge these two together. So make it a point. If you're doing digital and direct mail to have somebody who was responsible for looking at all of these assets to ensure that they are the same, they're giving the same message.
[00:11:13] Jeremy: They have the same. Theme, same images and everything like that. All right. The next thing that we want to talk about is understanding the available offers and an offer. The way that we're going to use it for fundraising is to look at what is the cost slash equivalency of your services or assistance that you provide?
[00:11:36] Jeremy: For example, let's just run through several options here. How much is a night of shelter? So we're doing a lot of math on this and some of these you already know. And a lot of these you have in your mind what it is. But really get with the numbers and understand. This is not like a hypothetical.
[00:11:54] Jeremy: We know that to house somebody, it costs this amount of money. So as we're going through this list here, [00:12:00] and hopefully this will apply to your nonprofit that's my hope. You may have a nonprofit that doesn't hit any of these, but hopefully you'll get the idea either way, whether this applies to you or not. So we want to break down cost of a night of shelter. How much is one meal.
[00:12:14] Jeremy: So the cost of a meal, and this could be for human services. It could be for animal care, understanding that the cost of a vaccination, the cost of a research study cost of any particular equipment that you might need or utilize with the services that you offer cost of transportation, cost of books, cost of supplies, cost of backpacks, cost of care for one person cost of care for one week. And the cost of a capital campaign.
[00:12:45] Jeremy: Now these are several different options. And naturally going through this list, you can understand that some of these may apply to your nonprofit, but some of them don't add off. Some of these may be more human services. Some may be more science, some may be more animal care, [00:13:00] but whatever it is that your nonprofit does understand your costs because you need money to fund your service and your cause. And in order to effectively communicate that need, it's always more successful to. Market to donors and say, this amount of money will get this impact.
[00:13:20] Jeremy: So think about costs versus impact. As opposed to just saying donate $20 now or donate $50 now. Donors want to know where their money is going to go, how their money is going to help. So you could say five nights of shelter equals $125. As a donor, I'm like, oh, okay, I'm giving $125. And as a donor, I get this kind of satisfaction where I feel like I've provided a shelter for somebody for five days.
[00:13:48] Jeremy: So whatever it is for your nonprofit, understand those costs and write them out. Don't just have these filed away in your mind. And what I want you to do is go through every piece of your costs and services that you offer. Now, if [00:14:00] you only offer one service and this will be relatively easy that now there's a lot of nonprofits that offer many things.
[00:14:05] Jeremy: For example, if you have a shelter, like what's the cost for a meal, what's the cost for a night of shelter. What's the cost for hygiene bags. What's the cost for clothes. All these little things. If your animal care, what's the cost for vaccinations, what's the cause for this kind of surgery, what's the cost to house. Dog or cat for a night or a week, or to take them through a rehabilitation program.
[00:14:27] Jeremy: So really break down all these different facets. That way you really have this pool of equivalencies that you can pull from. As we start to build out our campaigns. So write down each of the, it's almost like a menu, I hate to make it so transactional like that, but this helps to make it bite size and digestible for your donors, where they can wrap their brain around it.
[00:14:48] Jeremy: And it gives them less to think about, and that's what want to do reducing any kind of friction, even from the messaging, not just from the experience of. Digital fundraising where the whole donation process is easy, [00:15:00] but from the point of them even receiving your communication about your needs from fundraising, we want that to be very simple, to understand which is why we walked through this exercise. Now once you've made this list and maybe you have 20 things on there.
[00:15:13] Jeremy: Maybe you only have one or two. But ideally, I would like for you to really finalize five to seven different offers, if possible, that we can pull from and you can keep that other bank available. And it's always good to really have that list out in case you need to substitute something else. So now that we have our offers available. We can move on to that next step.
[00:15:34] Jeremy: And this really includes like identifying what assets that we'll be using for a fundraising campaign. And when I say assets, these are like your creative assets and a fundraising campaign. I'm just giving examples here because your nonprofit is different from the next nonprofit that is listening to this exact same podcast, but I'm going to give you an idea of what a fundraising campaign and what those assets would include.
[00:15:57] Jeremy: So this may include two to four [00:16:00] emails. It might include a hero website image, which is that big image. When someone first comes to your website at the very top, it's called a hero image. It may include a website pop-up or a light box. And these are the little boxes that pop up when you first go to a website and it may say something like, Hey, here's our campaign. Click to donate or click the box to close.
[00:16:21] Jeremy: There's only two choices. You can either click, donate or close it. And then you have the whole website that's loaded right behind it. The next piece would be a campaign donation page. This is something that many non-profits skip out on. They just send their campaign directly to their regular website donation page.
[00:16:40] Jeremy: And I would advise you against doing that. Because as we're building up this campaign, people are going to be interacting with your campaign through many different digital channels, your website, email, social media, and all this. And you're communicating something about your campaign, your. indicating an offer, maybe a story.
[00:16:57] Jeremy: And so we want the experience for your donor to [00:17:00] be continuous throughout. So if I'm marketing to you and I'm giving you this message about this offer and this need, and then I just drop you off on my. Donation page my generic donation page. It loses its luster and the propensity for people to leave or abandon your donation page will increase because they had in mind that they're going to give $50 to help do X.
[00:17:23] Jeremy: They go to your donation page. And. That messaging is not there. So now there's a question like, okay, this $50 that I was going to give, will it still go to X? Or where's it going to go? You call into question how the gift will be used, or even if you're on the right webpage, because it may, it could have the same logo, so people know, okay, this is the same organization.
[00:17:46] Jeremy: However, if we're marketing, the images are showing one thing you get to that donation page, and there's no messaging at all. It can be a little bit confusing and create some frictions. So always, always. Always create a separate donation [00:18:00] page that is in line with the creative assets and messaging of your fundraising campaign. Okay.
[00:18:07] Jeremy: The next piece. Would be to do two to four social media posts that are reflective of the language and messaging and images that you're using within your fundraising campaign. Also, if you're able to, if you have a little bit of budget and you can implement some Facebook ad campaigns and I have a whole separate episode about digital media, which talks about Facebook ads.
[00:18:28] Jeremy: So I'm not going to get into how to set it up, but just consider it right now as you're creating a campaign that you work, Facebook ads into the mix, just to help amplify it a little bit more. The next piece would be SMS messages. If you're using any SMS message providers, maybe one to two SMS messages per campaign, and this could be something at the start of a campaign, announcing it.
[00:18:49] Jeremy: And then maybe on the last day of the campaign to say, Hey, it's the last day to give. And you have a link there where people can make that donation. And then the other piece is tied to direct mail, but it's [00:19:00] also tied to digital and I would consider a QR code for your direct mail pieces. If you're sending out direct mail and you're not including a QR code on there. I believe that. You're actually leaving some money on the table in that respect, because we've come to a day and age where people are a lot more familiar with the QR code.
[00:19:18] Jeremy: Now several years ago. The QR codes really started to die out. They were very popular, but there was also a lot of friction. Like you had to have a separate app on your phone to actually scan a QR code, but now like most cell phones, the cameras have the built-in functionality to where you don't need a separate app.
[00:19:35] Jeremy: You just pull up the camera app on your phone and scan a QR code. And when COVID happened QR codes really made it come back. , if you think of restaurants and things like that, instead of handling paper menus or plastic menus in your hands, Hands. Restaurants would utilize QR codes. So even older generation that may not have been that familiar with how to use a QR code.
[00:19:55] Jeremy: It became something that got worked into normal everyday culture. So most people are [00:20:00] familiar with QR codes. Now, I believe that it's important for direct mail pieces, because there are people who will get your your direct mail piece and they may go online. They may type out the URL for your donation page.
[00:20:13] Jeremy: They may mail in that check. But if we can make it easier for them just to scan the QR code and it goes right to the donation page let's do that. Let's just add a QR code and give a call to action to scan here, to make your donation, make it easy. Okay. So those are the assets that I would put within the fundraising campaign.
[00:20:31] Jeremy: Just to recap those two to four emails, website, hero image, website, pop-up campaign donation, page two to four. Social media posts, Facebook ads, one to two SMS messages and a QR code.
[00:20:44] Jeremy: This next piece we're going to get into is where I literally want you to break out a calendar. And if you're driving in your car right now, or you don't have your computer, you're not working, just file this away for later, because I want you to come back and do this work.
[00:20:57] Jeremy: I literally want you to get out a [00:21:00] calendar, whether it's a paper calendar, or it's a calendar on your computer, doesn't matter. And what we want to do is plan month by month when it comes to these campaigns. Because ideally after we've created these offers, we have an idea of what these campaigns may be.
[00:21:14] Jeremy: And we want to build the campaigns around the offers. Now, if you're doing direct mail also. It's likely that you have already, what you are in the home dates will be for your direct mail, meaning that that our mail is going to hit this day of this week. So you have those ideas. I'm going to start out. It in January now, I don't know what your fiscal year is for your nonprofit.
[00:21:34] Jeremy: Some are in January, somewhere in June, July. So whatever it is, but we're just going to run month by month. And I'm going to give you a high level, what a year's worth of campaigns may look like. So in January, Consider a monthly giving campaign. It's a brand new year. People are making resolutions.
[00:21:52] Jeremy: Some people want to be more charitable. They are just coming off of giving that December 31st gift, knowing that there are some tax [00:22:00] deductions associated with that. So for this year, I want to be more involved with a local organization. And it's a great time to do a monthly giving campaign. So I would plan a monthly giving campaign in the month of January and you'll do two to three emails as a part of this campaign, along with all of those different fundraising campaign assets that we talked about before the break. And then it also sent an E newsletter out in the month of January. And no, an e-news letter is not part of a fundraising campaign, but it's very important in the digital realm. Not just to reach out to your donors, asking for money.
[00:22:33] Jeremy: We want to try to strike some kind of balance with fundraising emails and then affirmational emails. And a great affirmational email is an E newsletter because it affirms the work that you're doing as an organization. And it affirms the donor for what they are able to make possible. So January we have a monthly giving campaign, two to three emails and an e-newsletter. And February, I would also do an e-newsletter and quite honestly, every month, if [00:23:00] you're able to, I would do an e-newsletter.
[00:23:01] Jeremy: So instead of saying, this month, you newsletter next month, e-newsletter just put it up there every single month, doing a newsletter. If you cannot do an e-newsletter, if you don't have the time or resource to do an e-newsletter every single month. Then at least make it a goal to do an e-newsletter every other month. And this e-newsletter can highlight stories of impact.
[00:23:21] Jeremy: It can highlight someone within your organization. It can highlight. A constituent that's gotten assistance from you. It can highlight new evidence or research. It can highlight needs. There's a lot of things that you can do with an E newsletter. So plan on doing that every month, February. I don't know what this campaign would be for you, but plan on doing a campaign in February that has two to three emails as well. And March look at doing like a spring survey.
[00:23:46] Jeremy: This is a great opportunity to learn more about your donors. And again, keep in mind e-newsletter every month also send a spring survey. You can create something with survey monkey or something like that. And. Think of questions where [00:24:00] you can learn more about your donors that can help craft your messaging and really help to shape how you're marketing, but also shape your organization and maybe learning about volunteering or something like that.
[00:24:10] Jeremy: This is just a good engagement piece for your donors or email subscribers. So in March, you'd have spring survey and also a spring campaign. Think about what you can talk about in the spring time to help raise money for your nonprofit. And that would be two to three emails. Again, along with all of your campaign assets. In April. I would do a story with a light ask.
[00:24:30] Jeremy: So we're not doing like a full press. Hardcore fundraising campaign. We're telling a story. And then at the end of it, we're just doing a light ask. And I would just make this one email instead of two to three emails in a full campaign. So April we're not doing a full campaign, we're just doing an e-newsletter and then we're sending an email that has a good story and an ask to give, but it's not hardcore.
[00:24:50] Jeremy: And even with this one, maybe you're not using one of your offers. You're just telling a story. And it's if you'd like to continue to support us, you can make a gift here. In May we can take the month [00:25:00] off of fundraising. Give our donors a little room to breathe and we just have that e-newsletter. In June, we want to do our second monthly giving campaign for the year.
[00:25:09] Jeremy: And I usually recommend two to three monthly giving campaigns. And with this monthly giving campaign, we're not going to run the same emails that we ran in January, but we're going to tell new stories and provide new reasons why your offer may be the same. And the average monthly gift across the industry, at least right now is around $25. So as you create that monthly giving campaign, think of what are some equivalencies for $25 within your organization, and you might stretch it.
[00:25:35] Jeremy: Maybe you try a $25 offer, maybe a $40 offer, but you do that second monthly giving campaign in June. And this is two to three emails, of course, along with the rest of those campaign assets in July. You're doing an e-newsletter summer updates is a great option to an e-newsletter. If you're not doing one, it's like, Hey, here's what we're up to this summer. Here's what we're doing in the community.
[00:25:58] Jeremy: But then also [00:26:00] July is a good time to do like a summer needs campaign. Depending on your organization. This is a time, especially in human services and even animal care. Where the needs seem to go up in the summertime. And this is also a time of year where giving typically goes down. So to me, it's imperative that while your needs are up, that we're still putting that message out, that we need some assistance.
[00:26:19] Jeremy: So I would do a summer needs campaign. And we're starting this in July, and I would even roll that over into August. And as an option, you could do a July, August, summer needs. You could do a June slash July, summer needs, and honestly, that monthly giving campaign that you start in June, you can talk about the summertime and really piggyback on that and say, here's why monthly giving is so important. As we get into August, if you're not running a summer needs running into two months, this is a great time to do a back to school campaign with two to three emails.
[00:26:50] Jeremy: Along with that e-newsletter and September, this is another one where I would breathe a little bit. I wouldn't take the month off of fundraising, but this is also a good time to do [00:27:00] another short story with an ask. So you're not doing like a hardcore full court press and a full campaign.
[00:27:06] Jeremy: You're just sending one email with a light ask, gonna tell a good story and to continue to support us. You can make a donation here. Now in October. This is where you can really start to get into your fall campaigns. Some organizations want to wait until November to really start a fall or Thanksgiving here in the United States campaign, but you can start that towards the end of October.
[00:27:27] Jeremy: So that's really what I would recommend. Or you take a breather in October before we really go in, in November and December, because those are going to be the busiest times of the year for fundraising. So for October e-newsletter, of course. And then I would look at doing your fall or your Thanksgiving campaigns, and those would run through November.
[00:27:48] Jeremy: And when we're doing this, we would look at least three emails for a fall or Thanksgiving campaign. And you may actually, if you're not doing a fall campaign, it could be Thanksgiving. These could be two separate campaigns because if you're [00:28:00] not in the United States, You wouldn't do a Thanksgiving campaign, but even if you're in the United States, you may not want necessarily Thanksgiving messaging you may want to do.
[00:28:07] Jeremy: It's a fall campaign and maybe there are needs that you're gearing up for December and for the winter. So there's a, it's a great time to really kick off a campaign. In November. I also, in addition to your campaign, that e-newsletter, but also a thank you email a gratitude, an affirmational email. In a sense you're really priming donors and your subscribers. As you get into giving Tuesday and the month of December.
[00:28:30] Jeremy: So you do have a campaign that you're launching in November or at the end of October. And you're also sending that affirmational email just to thank donors and thanks supporters for how they've helped you out during this year. And towards the end of November. Depending on when giving Tuesday falls, I know it's been in December and I think it will be for the next couple of years. But, so that means in the month of November, probably mid month towards the latter part. This is when you really want to kick off that giving Tuesday campaign and that's going to run. [00:29:00] Again, depending on what day, giving Tuesday falls, it could run into the first week or so of December. For your giving Tuesday campaign.
[00:29:07] Jeremy: Like I have a whole separate episode about that. So dig into that, but we're looking at probably four to seven emails along with the rest of your campaign assets. Now as we get into December, there's a couple of options here. Of course, you're going to have your emails letter. You can also do like a holiday e-card. That's just fun and joyful and, celebratory. You could also do just a year-end campaign, which you would start around December 26th and run through December 31st.
[00:29:34] Jeremy: At which time you would run three to five emails. You can also, and I would recommend this do a holiday campaign, which would start really early December and run through December 24th. And that will be two to three emails. So when we're looking at between November and December we really are looking at the possibility of 12 to 15 emails and that may sound like a lot to you. But during this time of year, It's really not a lot because [00:30:00] people are expecting to hear from nonprofits.
[00:30:02] Jeremy: And also there's a lot of competition this time of year. So you have to have that awareness and that presence in the inbox and, through. Social media with ads and everything like that in order for donors to remember you and to make that final donation of the year. All right. So that is a lot as we look at what this means, your total assets for the year, we're looking at approximately 45 to 50 emails per year.
[00:30:27] Jeremy: And again, if that sounds like a lot to you, according to the M+R benchmark report, the average amount is actually 59 emails per year for nonprofits. So 47 is really under that average. We're also looking at 11 to 12 Facebook campaigns. So when we're talking about running ad campaigns, if you do everything that I talked about here and ran the campaigns and all the months that we talked about, you're looking at 11 to 12 Facebook campaigns.
[00:30:52] Jeremy: You're also looking at 11 to 12 hero images that need to be created popups that need to be created and donation pages that need to be created. [00:31:00] And then all in all for all these campaigns to support everything about 50 social media posts and about 25 SMS text messages. So I know as you're hearing these numbers, this probably sounds overwhelming. And they say. The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
[00:31:17] Jeremy: I don't know who the originator was of that, but one of my grad school, professors used to always say that. So I took that to heart and this is definitely a situation where. If you just look at it on paper, it's ah, it's like a gut punch and where do I start? But just start one campaign at a time.
[00:31:33] Jeremy: And that's why we walked through this month by month. Okay. Knock out January, knock out all your emails, put all your social media posts put together. Your Facebook images, your hero images, and just do one campaign at a time. Just knock through it. One campaign at a time, one e-newsletter at a time one month at a time and get that done.
[00:31:53] Jeremy: So that, that will be my sage advice to you. Plan one month. Put dates on the calendar. So I know we walked through [00:32:00] this really month by month, but as you're walking through it, literally break out that calendar and put the dates on the calendar where you're going to. Send out your emails the day that you're website banner or your hero image is going to go up the days that your Facebook ads will run the day that you need to have your donation page activated.
[00:32:19] Jeremy: All of this should be on a calendar. I keep mine on a calendar and I have reminders popping up all the time as for when things should be implemented. And I also have an Excel sheet. I have all these resources just so I don't forget. So I have reminders on my calendar. I have an Excel sheet with a calendar for the year that I look at a glance.
[00:32:34] Jeremy: And I know what day, everything. Is supposed to be activated and what day everything is supposed to be taken down. To help with this overwhelm. You also want to plan these resources. So internally. Understand whose role is what? And you might be the one that has to do all of this. If you're a very small nonprofit, if not, you want to understand who are the people on my team that can help with this?
[00:32:55] Jeremy: Who are the external agency partners or consultants or freelancers that I need to [00:33:00] tag in to help out with this. The good thing about everything that we're talking about on this podcast is that once you do this one time, The second year that you do it, it becomes so much easier. Because you've already done all the hard work.
[00:33:14] Jeremy: The first time you do this, the first year you do this, it's going to take you a while to do not only from a planning perspective, but also building out all the assets. Now, year two of this. It makes it a lot easier because you can look at the performance of each of these campaigns from the year before. And you can eliminate the poor performing campaigns, or you can tweak those to try to change some of the creative or the messaging. The ones that are successful, you run the same exact campaign and you'll probably tweak the images and the language a little bit, but you don't have to start all over from scratch.
[00:33:46] Jeremy: So that is like, The hope that I'm instilling in you today, do this one time, go through the grueling work. But get this done, you will have so much more in place for the future of your digital program. It [00:34:00] will make it so much easier. As you're planning next year and the year after that, because a lot of your assets will already be completed.
[00:34:07] Jeremy: You just need to go back and say, okay, this is still relevant. Let's test this. Offer versus this offer and it really helps you to expand. So set this foundation up and your, one of your digital fundraising program. All right. That is today's episode. We walked through how to create an annual digital fundraising program. Apply this information to your nonprofit because naturally. I can't speak directly to your services and what you do my hope was really to give you a framework and an outline of where to get started and how to approach this as you're doing the planning.
[00:34:40] Jeremy: So I want to thank you for tuning in to the Jeremy Haselwood show. If you did enjoy today's episode, don't forget to follow or subscribe. So you're always up to date when the latest episode drops until next time, keep following your dreams to find your purpose.
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