3 Fundraising Activations to Achieve Greater Giving This Year-End Season

The holidays signal a peak moment for generosity. People may gift new sneakers and concert tickets to their friends and family, but they also search for ways to support their local and online communities through causes that matter deeply to them.

Classy research shows that conversion rates on our platform are 2x higher during the year-end season, and Giving Tuesday alone sees 12x more donor acquisitions.

However, with giving declining for the second year, it’s time to reevaluate the tactics and strategies that don’t produce the results we want and create new protocols to inspire and motivate donors during this high-potential period.

To truly engage donors, you need unforgettable experiences delivered in resonant ways. However, your nonprofit likely has limited resources, so achieving this without help can be difficult. The right fundraising technology can help you innovate your approach to create the experiences that drive conversion at scale.  

3 year-end campaign optimizations

Donor cultivation and stewardship continue to center on the core principles of fundraising: authentic relationships and good storytelling. But with fewer dollars to spend on campaigns, how do we reach the people who can give and have passion for our cause? 

By reimagining how we deliver that message and letting technology do the hard work for us. 

Here are three ways technology can help you connect with donors and raise more this year-end:

1. Drive greater impact per page

Generosity is at its peak during the year-end holiday season. According to Gallup research, holiday spending reached its highest in November 2023.  

Data also shows that nonprofits typically see a surge in new supporters during the year-end season, making every point of conversion 3.7x more valuable than any other point in the year due to high traffic. 

How can your nonprofit maximize this donation potential?

Organizations can utilize proprietary data models to personalize their outreach and make the right ask at the right time. These sophisticated models can significantly boost engagement and donations, elevating impact during this crucial time.

Use Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts to raise more

That sounds great in theory, but how can our nonprofit achieve this at scale? Research has repeatedly shown that nonprofits typically lack the bandwidth and financial resources to build said sophisticated models to boost engagement and donations. 

Traditionally, nonprofits manually segmented their donors and sent tailored donation pages or specific ask amounts based on these segments. Fortunately, intelligent fundraising technology like Classy can automate and streamline this process, making personalized donor engagement achievable (and scalable) for organizations of any size.

Classy’s Intelligent Ask Amounts leverages machine learning and de-identified data to predict how much a donor is most likely to give, and provide a tailored ask amount.  

This approach allows personalization at scale, surpassing traditional segmentation methods, like broad donor categories or one-size-fits-all campaigns. It also ensures that donations are not left on the table and that the right ask is put in front of the right donor every single time.

But what about donation optimization? Many nonprofits know that machine learning helps them optimize the donation process but aren’t sure how to implement it into their systems. Classy does all the hard work so organizations can focus more on the mission. That’s how nonprofits like World Central Kitchen have already achieved personalization at scale comparable to their for-profit counterparts, resulting in a significant increase in average gift size.

How to turn on this feature:

If you’re a Classy customer and want to enable Intelligent Ask Amounts, you can do so on Classy Studio, embedded, or donation page campaign types.

2. Create cohesive, branded donor journeys

Creating cohesion from supporters’ first impression of your nonprofit to a completed donation is critical because it builds trust and reinforces your message, enhancing the donor experience. Aligning the design and content of your donation page seamlessly with the email, social post, ad, or direct mail that guided supporters there provides a unified path. 

This consistency reassures donors they’re in the right place, minimizing confusion and hesitation, which can significantly increase conversion rates. Additionally, a cohesive journey ensures that the narrative and emotional appeal that attracted the donor remain strong, increasing the likelihood of completing their donation. 

Especially at this time of year, your donors are inundated with distractions: the upcoming election, other charitable causes, retail promotions, the relentless news cycle, and more. Ensuring you capture donors’ eyes and hearts from the moment they land on your page will heavily influence their next action.

Enrich your nonprofit story with Studio

If your donation page needs a revamp, you don’t have to hire a branding agency or developer to give it the refresh it needs. Classy Studio is an easy and flexible campaign builder that empowers you to create personalized and connected campaign experiences without writing any code. 

With Studio, donor journeys no longer get fragmented across channels. You can unify the experience with a cohesive story that matches each donor’s involvement, preferences, and journey. 

Taking years of customer feedback into account, we’ve designed Studio to be the most optimized campaign builder available. It features enhanced search-engine-optimized elements, improved accessibility, faster load times, and more.

That means you don’t have to compromise between design and conversion. Studio provides the configurability and performance needed for breakthrough supporter experiences.

Studio also allows you to amplify any campaign with community-powered social proof and customizable elements, like progress bars and activity feeds. Additionally, new sponsor-matching capabilities allow you to set match multipliers of 2x, 3x, and 4x, and specify a minimum amount to qualify for a match, incentivizing higher donations.

How to turn on this feature:

If you’re already a Classy customer, you can register for one of our upcoming live trainings to elevate your giving experiences with Studio. However, if you’re new to our platform yet, request a demo and learn how our latest innovations can help propel your mission forward.

3. Offer options to give to multiple affinity areas

Your donors care deeply about multiple areas of your organization, so why should they have to choose only one to support? 

Classy’s Giving Cart simplifies the process and reimagines traditional appeals. Already, Classy customers have seen that 15% of donors have contributed more than one gift per giving experience through Giving Cart. 

Expand the potential of each appeal with Giving Cart

Nonprofits consistently aim to grow recurring giving during year-end but worry about reducing larger, one-time donations and meeting their fundraising goals. With Giving Cart, nonprofits no longer have to choose. Donors don’t, either. They can now add one-time donations and recurring giving plans to their checkout cart. 

That means within one checkout experience, a donor can choose to make a one-time donation to your year-end campaign, make another to your disaster relief campaign, sign up for a recurring giving plan, and register for an upcoming event. 

Giving Cart eliminates manual barriers for donors and makes filling and checking out their philanthropic “shopping carts” a breeze. 

How to turn on this feature:

If you’re already a Classy customer, you can request a Giving Cart upgrade here. However, if you’re not on our platform yet, learn more about Giving Cart’s potential.

Future optimizations to look out for

People show their advocacy and activism in various ways, whether giving directly to their favorite charitable causes, doing a DIY fundraiser, or starting a Facebook fundraiser. The challenge for nonprofits is meeting evolving donor preferences by tapping into these different support modes. 

Tap into a new supporter audience with GoFundMe nonprofit pages

Young people are eager to give back to the causes they’re most passionate about, and many find these causes through the GoFundMe platform. To help nonprofits unlock the generosity potential of this vibrant community, we’re introducing GoFundMe nonprofit pages.  

With nonprofit pages, organizations can directly connect with potential supporters by inviting them to learn more about their mission, donate to one of their programs, or start fundraisers on GoFundMe. This innovative tool opens a new on-ramp for nonprofits to connect with GoFundMe donors while seamlessly integrating donor data into the Classy platform for a more consolidated view of fundraising.

Note: This release is in its early stages and will gradually expand to include more verified charities as the giving season approaches.

Set proactive plans to boost your year-end fundraising

To help our customers maximize the 2024 giving season, we’re excited to launch an exclusive four-part, year-end training series starting September 19. This series will equip you with the latest strategies and insights to elevate your fundraising, create unforgettable supporter experiences, and achieve greater giving.

For those not yet on Classy, learn more about how our fundraising intelligence solutions can propel your mission forward this year-end season and beyond, then request a platform demo to see it all in action.

Copy Editor: Ayanna Julien