With people buying presents, going on holidays, or treating themselves after another huge year – December and January have historically been tough times to raise funds.
To help combat this, we’ve compiled some of our top tips and tricks to help you make the most of this holiday period.
Tip #1. Frame donations as gifts
Whilst you aren’t able to offer any sort of reward for donors who give to your campaign, you can think about framing donations as gifts. For example, if you are running a campaign to fund your youth orchestra for another year you might outline:
A gift of $50 will buy a box of reeds for a saxophonist
A gift of $100 will support a student’s tuition for one month
A gift of $1000 will restock our cummerbund supply
By outlining gift amounts, it lets donors know the change their donation can make which can encourage people to give more. If you choose to use this strategy, make sure to include a $50 level as this continues to be the most common donation amount across fundraising campaigns.
Tip #2. Let donors know about recurring donations
With people a little strapped for cash over the December-January period, let your donors know about recurring donations! On the ACF, donors have the option of paying a one-off amount or they can give a rolling donation that occurs weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. This means that rather than a donor having to donate $100 upfront, for example, they can pay $10 a week for 10 weeks to make things more manageable.
It’s important to note however, that these donations will stop once your campaign finishes so we only recommend promoting this option if you have at least a couple of months of your campaign remaining.
Tip #3. Remind donors of the tax deductibility
Every donation over $2 is tax deductible on the ACF – how great is that! Tax deductions aren’t just important in June, people are keen to get donations out the door and receive their receipts all year round. More on this here.
*It might even be worth reiterating that 100% of the funds will go to you, the artist, so donors know exactly where their funds are going.
Tip #4. Take stock
If the momentum has slowed a little, this bit of a reprieve can provide a great opportunity to take stock of how the campaign has been going and build from this.
Sit down and map out what you’ve done so far, what the result has been and what you could do better. This might involve tweaking your marketing strategy if you find that majority of donors have been coming from your Instagram account or perhaps certain messaging has been working better than others. It could also be helpful to have a look at who your donors have been so far and brainstorm other groups that you could target and engage.
Tip #5. Recognise your donors
With less donations coming in, you don’t want to run the risk of your campaign going completely cold with people forgetting about it, so it’s a great time to give recognition to those who have supported your project so far. This could look like a special newsletter that you put out to thank supporters or perhaps you host a holiday shindig for donors (with QR codes linking to your campaign scattered around of course!).
Recognition posts are also a great way to fill up your socials up with fun and festive content, for example you could do a 12 days of Christmas thank-athon or an online advent calendar where you can release things like behind the scenes footage or a sneak peak of the project each day.
Check out some more ideas of how you could thank your donors in this blog post.