January Checklist for Fundraisers

Jeff Schreifels

You made it through the year-end push. You finished all of your last minute donor meetings, made all of your calls, and completed a host of holiday events. I bet you're still exhausted from the busy season. I mean, I know I am. While we hope you're finding the proper rest and rejuvenation, the work isn't done yet. In this early part of January, there are a handful of strategies to focus on to cultivate strong relationships with your donors and keep the momentum going deeper into the winter. Today, my colleagues Diana Frazier and Edie Dahlin will be joining me for an in depth conversation about how fundraisers should start their new year and prepare to surpass last year's goals. Thanks for listening.

Recorded

Welcome to the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group featuring Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels. Twice a month, we bring you the latest and best thinking about major gift fundraising so you can develop authentic relationships with your major donors. Here are your hosts, Richard and Jeff.

Jeff Schreifels

Welcome to the podcast today. I'm Jeff Schreifels, and today I've invited two of our coaches, Diana Frazier and Edie Dahlin, to join me as we discuss the key strategies we recommend fundraisers focus on in January. But before we dive in, I want to give Edie and Diana an opportunity to introduce themselves. Diana, why don't you just go first?

Diana Frazier

Thanks, Jeff. I'm here in the Philadelphia area. I was a frontline fundraiser for 32 years before joining the Veritus team, and I've been with this group for 11 years. I like to run. I wish I was more disciplined. I have a dog I love, friends and family, and all those good things. Edie?

Edie Dahlen

Thanks, Diana. Hi. I'm Edie Dahlen, coming to you from sunny Minnesota. And I've been with Veritus group for five years. Before that, I was in the non-profit world for 30 plus years with a focus on development and finance.

Jeff Schreifels

Awesome. Well, as you both know, coming into January, a lot of fundraisers we work with are tired after a very busy year-end season. And while we highly recommend taking time to rest and recover, there are also some important strategies you need to focus on during this month to continue to build upon those relationships with your donors. So let's start by talking about the thank you process and some considerations and challenges fundraisers may be experiencing.

Diana Frazier

Yeah, Jeff, that's a good place to start. First thing to do is continue to promptly thank the donors as soon as you know that gift is processed. And by the way, you can use your thank you call or email as part of your qualification plan. If you're doing that, you can help expedite, move you forward on that if you've never connected with a donor before. They've just given, they feel very good about what they did, and you you might get them on the phone more this time than any other time in your process.

Diana Frazier

Another thing to keep in mind, and I know you all know this tale of woe, but gift processing delays may cause a lag in the communication or maybe even create a concern for the donor if they haven't heard from you yet. So stay patient. Stay in communication with your processing team and provide regular updates to your donors as needed. You can still thank them even if the gift hasn't come through your CRM yet. So look for celebrations about impact from 2024 to reach out and have a conversation. And when you do these kind of check-in calls, you might learn that maybe a gift from a DAF, a stock transfer IRA, or other gift that was delayed might have been, that really might be a crediting problem in the system, so now you have some forensic work you can do to try to solve that problem.

Jeff Schreifels

Awesome. Okay. You know, one of the main focuses we have in our coaching in January is around caseload refreshes. So Edie, can you talk through what that means and what fundraisers should do in a refresh?

Edie Dahlen

Yes, January is such a good time to determine who should be on your caseload, ensuring that you're working with just the right donors. So ideally, we recommend starting to flag donors the fundraiser may want to remove from their caseload over the course of the year. If you haven't done that yet, now is the perfect time. So here's how to approach a caseload refresh in a major gift case load. You'll want to identify and remove donors who you've tried to connect with over the last year but weren't able to reach, or who are not responsive. Ideally, these donors would move into a mid-level program if you have one, then you want to review any donors who are giving below the criteria for your caseload. For example, if the bottom of your threshold is $1,000 and the donor is giving less than that, consider moving those donors to mid-level, and then you'll want to review your tiers. Do you have any donors who need to move up or down a tier based on their giving inclination and capacity? For example, you may have initially placed a donor in Tier C due to their giving level, but over the year, you've identified that they have high capacity. Consider moving them to Tier A to explore opportunities for greater engagement and impact.

Edie Dahlen

And then begin the process of qualifying to move new donors onto your caseload. If you don't already have a qualification pool, you will definitely want to build one. If you have a mid-level program, talk to those folks to see you know if they have donors who are ready to be moved from the mid-level program to the major gift program.

Edie Dahlen

And then doing a mid-level caseload refresh is really similar. We recommend again, starting to flag donors the fundraiser may want to move from their caseload over the course of the year. And again, if you haven't done that, January is the perfect time to do that. So again, identify and remove donors who you've tried to connect with but weren't able to reach. And these donors can move back to the direct response or to stewardship-only caseload, if that's appropriate. Again, review any donors who are giving below the criteria for your caseload, consider moving them back to direct response. Again, reviewing the donor tiers. Do you have any donors who need to move up or down based on their giving inclination and capacity? And new donors: moving new donors into your pool, onto your caseload, and begin the Introduction Series with those donors.

Jeff Schreifels

Awesome. Thank you for that. You know, January's a great time of year to review your plan and then make adjustments. So Diana, could you speak more to that?

Diana Frazier

Sure. I mean, my number one tip actually, is to go to your calendar right now, or as soon as you're done listening to this, and block some time on your calendar so it's saved there for you to do it. But whether your fiscal year is actually the calendar year or some other time frame, January is an important planning time for strategy. So if your fiscal year is not calendar year, review where you thought you'd be by this time. So if you're at the six-month mark in your fiscal year, or maybe the nine-month mark in your fiscal year, how has your plan worked so far? Be really honest with yourself. And where do you need to adjust and think that through? Like, okay, this is what I thought would happen, but this is what really happened. This is what I want to have happen. That kind of a thing, right? So just take the time to do that.

Diana Frazier

If the calendar year is your fiscal year, you're really at the most natural break anyway. You've done some planning. Hopefully you've already set your goals for 2025 and you've mapped out some plans. But this gives you a moment to... we recommend you take time to reflect on the last year. Think about 2024. What worked? Where have you... maybe some new opportunities going forward? And begin to put that into your plan. For major gifts in particular, review your cash flow goals and adjust your plan accordingly. So if you're in month three, six, or nine of your fiscal year, you want to make sure that if somebody did not give according to the time frame you thought, if you believe they can make that gift, move the goal forward so it's in your front windshield, so to speak.

Jeff Schreifels

Well and make sure you tell your supervisor.

Diana Frazier

Oh well, yeah. I'm not talking about removing the goal. I'm talking...

Jeff Schreifels

No, I know. But adjusting the plan, you know, you always want to let people know, "Hey, this is what's happening on cash flow and why it's not going to be 100,000 this month, but maybe next month."

Diana Frazier

What's critical is if there was something you, say you thought something would come in October, and you really don't think it's going to come in by fiscal year, leave the goal behind you and definitely report that up, because that's revenue that won't come in. The other revenue... you always tell your manager what's going on. The other goal, you might move forward, because you're still looking for it. You're still hoping that that will come in. That's a really critical thing for understanding your cash flow. And so you can forecast more accurately as you get closer to the end of the fiscal year. And keep all parties up to date.

Diana Frazier

You want to also review your meaningful connections and non-financial goals. What is it you have hoped to have done that maybe didn't happen. Who do you need to focus on more? Maybe you need to put a few additional steps in. Maybe you thought there were some people you'd meet or see at an event last fall, and that didn't happen. So you need to think differently about 2025 to make sure you get, you know, connected to people face to face wherever possible, and then look forward at the things you already have planned. Maybe you need to adjust them, or maybe you just had a sketch of a plan before. Now's the time to put in a little more detail. Another good thing to do is review who surprised you, and hopefully it's in a good way. Maybe there was somebody who gave double what they normally did, or they, something else happened. Take time to think about, how would you really celebrate and steward them on that. And then connect early with your internal team right now on any touch points you might need in the next six months, so you... anything you need collaboration on, give them as much advanced notice as you can. And that will help it all go better.

Jeff Schreifels

Yeah, you know on that last point, collaboration, internally is critical. And there's a lot you can do to set yourself up for a good year and engage your team, especially coming off year-end.

Edie Dahlen

Yes, absolutely. We do not do this work alone, so we want to think about who we can show our appreciation to internally. So think about program teams and report back to them on any big wins and how they supported your communication with donors. And what about finance? Maybe they helped you crunch some numbers for a proposal that you were giving to a donor. Let them know how helpful that was. Thank the administration and gift processing teams for the work that they did to process the gifts and sending out those timely receipts to the donor. I had one development team with one of the organizations I work with, they actually had donuts and coffee delivered in January to the admin and gift processing team to show their appreciation for their hard work at year end processing those thousands and thousands of gifts.

Diana Frazier

That's great, Edie. I love that!

Edie Dahlen

What about any volunteers? Do you have volunteers who supported the development team? Let them know that they made a difference and celebrate how team members, other team members, contributed to the organization's year-end giving success. This is an important one. Share any feedback donors may have had on certain touch points or information that was particularly helpful to them. Program teams, other team members love to hear from donors. Remember to share the credit; the development team did not do this alone. You know that. So when celebrating your wins, remember to show appreciation for the other people who helped you connect meaningfully with your donors at year-end and all year long.

Edie Dahlen

And then think about how you can collaborate internally as well. So depending on how big your development team is, you might have varying levels of opportunity for collaboration internally. If there's a staff member focused on any of the areas I'm going to be talking about, think about opportunities to partner on planning and any upcoming asks you have, and if not, consider these areas in your own planning for each donor.

Edie Dahlen

So IRA direct gifts. January is the primary time when donors plan for distributions. If you have donors who have indicated that they want to give in this way or have given this way previously, begin talking to them about it in January.

Edie Dahlen

Corporate giving. January is again a common time when many corporations conduct some level of strategic planning, including donation planning for any donors that own a business or may have insights or influence with their company's foundation. Ask them when they do their corporate gift planning for the year. Build this into your plan, or partner with your corporate giving officer to collaborate on a blended proposal.

Edie Dahlen

Events. Do you do events at your organization? If you do, there are many donors that might be on mid-level or major gift caseloads that are actively engaged in an event at your organization. This is another great opportunity to create a blended proposal and tie their support for the event into your larger strategy for the donor. And then consider what programs you can gain deeper understanding of in the coming year and make a plan for that. Really immerse yourself in the work whenever possible, because gaining deeper insights into your programs will help you take your donors to the scene.

Jeff Schreifels

Awesome. Good stuff. Diana and Edie, thank you so much for joining me today. And I hope each of you listening were inspired and motivated to try one of these strategies, if not one, all of them, to make an impact with your donors in January. And if you're ready to get the full system and structure we use to coach fundraisers on building authentic relationships with their donors, now is the time to sign up for our best-in-class certification courses. The next sessions start on February 10th. You can find a link to sign up in the show notes, or head straight to our website under Training to sign up. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

Recorded

Thank you for joining us for the Nothing But Major Gifts podcast from Veritus Group. Richard and Jeff also write an ongoing blog that you can subscribe to for free at veritusgroup.com. Please join us again next time.