Saturday, December 25, 2010

Year-End Fundraising Mistakes to Avoid

To date, these are mine:
  • Sending your year-end solicitation within a month of when the donor made his/her most recent donation.
  • Losing track of the donor's preferred title of address. Don't send me a letter that starts with "Dear Mr. Hirsch."
  • Claiming, even humorously, that you're the charity most worthy of receiving donations. This could be funny in boom times. In a year when employment in Alameda County is close to 12%, the economy is in the tank, and there's a lot of suffering, not funny and not persuasive from a small arts organization.
Post yours in the comments!

5 comments:

joXn said...

Sending a letter begging for more money when -- unlike all the other charities I donated to over the course of 2010 -- you never sent a thank-you note for my previous gifts.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Ooof. That's a good one to avoid. I think some organizations send all of their acknowledgments at year-end, and I understand why it's hard for a small organization to send out letters on a continuous basis. Still!

Kevin said...

Rule number 2,391: If you're running a phone campaign, remember to cross off the person from your list who (this year) politely declined to donate; this in case you accidentally call them during dinner the very next evening, twice.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Too much Christmas cheer?

Anonymous said...

Don't send your contributors a useless gift package parcel post. If they've moved, they'll have to pay a huge postage due, as the USPS free forwarding doesn't include parcel post.