The Future of Fundraising

Welcome to the future of fundraising.

We have about four weeks left in the calendar year ends. Whether this marks your fiscal year-end or not, we all know that we see most of our donors give their annual gift between now and December 31.

Fundraising leaders: how confident are you that the verbal commitments your fundraisers have received from donors will turn into bookable revenue by the end of the year?

My team and I have had the pleasure of working with leaders who don't feel a sense of anxiety when they face this question this year. We've found that by creating formal documentation of verbal commitments – committed gifts are much more likely to convert into bookable revenue on the timeline they initially agreed to with donors.

If you are struggling with confidence that your LYBUNT and SYBUNT lists will shrink as much as you need, consider reaching out to my team – we'd be happy to show you a better way, and one you can implement in a week. We also developed the checklist below to help you out.

Here's what's on my radar this week:

Key Giving Tuesday Statistics Show Donor Decline

Tens of millions of donors came together on Giving Tuesday 2023 to raise funds for nonprofits, collectively. However, compared to 2022, GivingTuesday reports a 10% decline in overall donor participation. Meanwhile, gifts remained flat, at an estimated $3.1 billion.

Before the downward and flat trends were announced, GivingTuesday CEO, Asha Curran told The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Donation trends are very volatile right now, and there’s a lot that’s going on that’s very concerning, including a decrease in donor participation.”

On the AFP Connect Open Forum, fundraisers were quick to comment on their campaign results. Choosing to comment anonymously, some of these comments and questions included…(KEEP READING)

[WEBINAR] Maximizing Donor Commitment: Multi-Year Pledges for Leadership & Digital Giving with Stony Brook University

Thursday, December 7 at 2:30 pm ET

How do you maximize your donor's commitment in Leadership and Digital Giving?

Stony Brook University strategically asked this challenging question of its fundraising programs. Along with Givzey, Stony Brook designed a strategy to scale pledges beyond major gifts and to these two critical areas of fundraising in order to increase giving revenue and grow the major and planned giving pipelines.

In this session, Givzey's VP of Customer Success, Emily Groccia, sits down with Stony Brook University's Director of Leadership Annual Giving, Austin Byrd so you can learn how this strategy maximizes donor commitments at these giving levels.

Learning Objectives:

• Why multi-year pledges make strategic sense for Leadership Annual Giving
• What results Stony Brook is looking to achieve by scaling pledges to more giving levels
• What multi-year pledge campaigns look like at these giving levels
• How Givzey empowers Stony Brook to strategically scale multi-year pledges to all levels of giving

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IRS-Speak Can Often Use Translation (NonProfit Times)

Keeping the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) happy is no easy chore, one that is sometimes made more difficult by terminology that IRS examiners understand but that a normal human can’t comprehend.

Speaking during a nonprofit accounting conference, an IRS official offered clarification of a few terms that might be of help to nonprofit organizations when dealing with the IRS and trying to speak the same language that its employees do. (NonProfit Times)

Fundraising Jobs

If you have jobs you would like posted in the Future of Fundraising newsletter, please email hello@givzey.com with your requests.

• Major Gift Officer | Center for the Rights of Abused Children | Phoenix, AZ | APPLY>>>
• Associate Director of the Research and Action Center $100,000 - $120,000 | Impact Justice | Oakland, CA | APPLY>>>
• Associate Vice Chancellor for Advancement, Health Sciences | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Urbana-Champaign, IL | APPLY>>>

How to Convert Verbal Donor Commitments into Bookable Giving Revenue

The end of the calendar year comes with heaps of anxiety, whether it marks the fiscal year or not.

Anxiety about missing year-end fundraising goals. Anxiety about the donors still on LYBUNT and SYBUNT lists. Anxiety about how much pressure they can place on fundraisers to bring gifts in the door by 11:59 PM on December 31.

The problem isn’t necessarily the donors who have been unresponsive this year, but those who have verbally committed to gifts that haven’t arrived.

Use this checklist to convert verbal commitments into bookable revenue.