The year-end appeal is a staple among many non-profit organizations’ fundraising practices. With holiday cheer and the close of the calendar year on people’s minds, it is a time when philanthropic and charitable inclinations run high–making it an opportune time to fundraise. For the Brain Injury Alliance of Nebraska, this time of year is when we execute our primary fundraising campaign.

Planning a project, especially one of this magnitude, takes strategy and intentionality. One of my go-to ways of wrapping my mind around a project and organizing the train of thought about the project is to develop a creative or project brief.

For the year-end campaign, I knew it would be important to have multiple touch points such as emails, social media posts, and a direct mail campaign for people to see before they would interact with our content and make a donation. I also knew that these touchpoints needed to relate to one another, and even build upon each other–making it important to develop a cohesive theme for continuity and recognizability.

It also meant it would be necessary to emphasize the importance of doing a personalized and segmented direct mail campaign as part of the year-end fundraising efforts. With that in mind, I segmented the direct mail into three groups: prospective/new donors, current donors and lapsed donors.

In total, we mailed 257 letters, and asked staff and board members to send follow-up postcards with a personal note to their contacts. 

Using elements that I recently incorporated into our organization’s visual branding, I developed a visual theme that gave a sense of movement and energy through its colorful, swirling, curving lines. These elements also doubled as a subtle reference to streamers, ribbons, or fireworks. The brand colors of purple, blue, and a deep magenta emphasized dignity, trust, harmony, kindness, and reliability, while the soft curves presented a sense of approachability and warm friendliness

To figure out the timing of the campaign's messages and components, I started with the dates I knew it would be important to have content published on such as Giving Tuesday and the end of December, then worked backward to determine the frequency so that I could build up the number of social media posts and time emails to lead up to those dates. From there, it was a matter of identifying which topics related best to one another and balancing a more serious subject with a highlight or impact story.

In addition to the overall year-end campaign efforts, I felt it was important to do a “primer” campaign to show donors the impact of their support and our gratitude before we began our “ask.”

Part of my strategy for the month leading up to the official launch of the year-end campaign was to “prime” our audience by showing our appreciation via social media for the support given to us throughout the year.

Here are a few examples of what we did in October:

A Facebook shout-out post featuring individuals who had set up and run Facebook fundraisers to date in 2022.

A social post highlighting a pilot workshop and how donor support helps make that workshop and similar opportunities available to our clients.

An email and social post sharing stats from one of our grant reports–showcasing the breadth of services they helped provide with their support.

Throughout these pieces, we emphasized the donors and supporters and how grateful we are for their support. This was intended to position the Brain Injury Alliance of Nebraska at the forefront of supporters’ minds as the holiday season and year-end giving campaigns occur.

For the digital campaign, we sent out nine emails and 27 social media posts to help provide additional touchpoints beyond the direct mail campaign. 

With the number of posts and emails, it was important to have landing pages for not only the key campaign themes of celebration and growth, but also for topics such as supporting concussion management and prevention efforts and services, providing resources, and honoring caregivers. These additional landing pages would provide a sense of continuity that would otherwise be lost if the social media posts and emails focusing on these topics were linked to the general theme pages. Below is a list of the landing page URLs developed for this campaign.

Segment: New / Prospective Donors, Lapsed Donors, and General Website Visitors
https://biane.org/2022-giving/help-build-moments-worth-celebrating.html

Segment: Current Donors
https://biane.org/2022-giving/make-a-difference.html

Overall, the campaign raised a gross of over $13,000 to help support our mission of creating a better future for Nebraskans affected by brain injury.