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Aug 26, 2019

Fall Forecast

Not to be a Negative Nelly, but do y’all remember last December?

Last December we had the triple-downer of:

  1. a sharp stock market decline;
  2. a government shutdown; and
  3. general political divisiveness.

The net effect was one of the poorest performing fundraising Decembers of the past decade.

If you’ve read the news lately, among the headlines are topics such as:

  1. stock market nervousness over the China trade-war (and September/October historically tends to be a common month for crashes);
  2. concern of a government shutdown on September 30 over the Administration’s plan to cutoff of international aid; and
  3. general political divisiveness.

In times of economic uncertainty, donors are hesitant to add new organizations to their giving portfolios. This could mean a rough acquisition season.

However, your most loyal donors tend to step up their giving during adverse economic environments.

Hopefully I’m wrong and we’ll have a stellar fall acquisition season where the money just rolls in. But on the chance that my concerns are justified, it might be good to start planning for a CYE telemarketing campaign to your best donors to fill the potential gap. I know a lot of organizations (more correctly, their BODs) hate TM. But may I suggest one piece of advice: get over it. TM works. And in economic adverse times, your organization needs to utilize all the tools available to secure the funds you need to fulfill your mission.

One More Gift from Sustainers

I think we’d all agree that sustainers are great. Having a group of donors that have committed to giving every month is like money in the bank. And, not surprisingly, a lot of organizations are careful to limit additional appeals to this group so not to alienate any...

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Early Returns

We are knee-deep in analyzing last fall’s results. While there is of course some variation in results by organization, the general narrative is that last fall wasn’t great . . . but it wasn’t awful either. It was just OK. What we are seeing is that overall revenue was...

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How Fundraising Will Evolve

In honor of International Data Week, I’m sharing how the future of fundraising will evolve. Many people are concerned about fundraising (I’m not btw). For nearly two decades, the “experts” have been predicting the death of direct mail fundraising. Eventually, the...

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