How Purposeful Planning Lead to Record Fundraising Success

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How Purposeful Planning Lead to Record Fundraising Success

City of Refuge was one of the highest earning nonprofits who participated in the 2020 CoMoGives campaign. But $48,615 in donations didn’t happen by accident! How did they do it? Garrett and Andrea will explain the careful planning that lead to a huge day 1 and overall amazing end of year fundraising campaign for their organization.

Purposeful Planning Cliff Notes

Deciding what to do?

Garret says they had reached their capacity for what they could reasonably accomplish and didn’t feel like they were doing all the things they needed to do. Bringing on Andrea, a person who could focus on the end of year giving through CoMoGives was a huge help and her efforts really made the difference in their campaign. They felt like this role would pay for itself because it will bring in new volunteers, funding and supporters. They decided since this year was so unique that they would go outside their comfort zone and try new things, and down loaded Mayecreate’s planning schedule.

What did they do differently?

They sent letters in the mail which they have done in the past but they hadn’t done it recently.
They sent more emails and made more posts especially on GivingTuesday.
They went live on Facebook on GivingTuesday.
They tried for 5 peer-to-peer but only got 1.
They identified supporters and then talked about how they can help others start supporting us too.
They removed obstacles by considering who hadn’t heard about them before, educating them about what they do they they would consider supporting.

What will they do next year?

Next year they will absolutely continue to plan ahead of time. They will accomplish this by:

Writing emails and posts ahead of time.

Gathering and sharing stories of refugees.

Tell people what they are doing so they know where there money is going.

Review their market to see what is working.

Kick off their campaign strong from day one.

Marketing lessons learned.

Plan as much as possible! Right now they want to plan out the next three months intentionally instead of just doing things on a day by day basis.
They’ve been resistant to posting a lot and through this they learned that whether it is emails or Facebook the people who love City of Refuge want to hear about it. And the people who don’t are just going to unfollow and that’s okay. In the long run they’ll gain more people than they lose.
Garrett used to feel like every post had to be a home run.
It had to be better than the last and reach more people.. But he now realizes, life is messy and helping people is messy and sharing the story is the most important part.
This year Garrett wants to focus on building their organizational awareness, getting their name out there, getting their cause out there and building bridges not just making the ask right now but paving the way so when needs do pop up they have a network they can turn to and ask for help.