4 End-Of-Year Insights That Will Boost Fundraising in 2020

January 6, 2020 | EveryAction Team
4 End-Of-Year Insights that Will Boost Fundraising in 2020

The holiday season (Thanksgiving – end of year) is when more than 20% of all funds are raised by nonprofits around the country. It’s a crucial time to activate your donors and supporters, but your efforts shouldn’t start or stop there. After analyzing key giving season trends from 2019 (scroll to the end to see the data in infographic form!), here are a few insights and takeaways that will serve your strategic plans for 2020. 

1. Keep Nimble 

The holiday season is important for donation pushes, and the final three days of the year are particularly crucial, accounting for over 6% of all online donations in 2019. While you can rely on the end of the year to drive traffic, make 2020 the year of being nimble throughout the entire year. Take advantage of key moments in time. For instance, after the Democratic primary debate on Dec. 19, 2019, we saw a distinct uptick in donations – especially to voter registration nonprofits and others engaged in the electoral process. During these-high traffic and ‘moment driven’ donation times, make sure your supporters can donate quickly using FastAction saved payments.  

2. Increase your recurring donor base  

While every donation helps, some can prove more valuable—and not in an immediately obvious way. One-time donors tend to give larger donations at the outset (with an average gift size of $52.96 in 2019), while recurring gift sizes are significantly lower ($18.28). But most recurring gifts are made each month, meaning that over 12 months the average recurring gift is worth more than 4x the average one-time gift.  Enhance your sustainer program in 2020, making it even more flexible than before.  

3. Long live email!  

Email is still the backbone of digital fundraising. Throughout the 2019 holiday season we saw that the number of emails our clients sent directly correlated with the number of donations made. Take a few days such as Giving Tuesday, Dec. 19 and Dec. 23, 2019; when more emails were sent on those days, online donations spiked. On New Year’s Eve, 240 million emails were sent out resulting in the largest volume of online donations for the year—three times the volume of an average day.  

Don’t forget about our email templates you can download for example language and tips.   

4. Giving Tuesday is only the beginning of the year-end giving season 

While Giving Tuesday 2019 resulted in millions raised, thousands of donations and millions of emails, online giving peaked on New Year’s Eve this year––it resulted in three times more online donations, and the average contribution was more than twice the normal giving. Consider placing a greater emphasis on leveraging the very end of the year, using Giving Tuesday as a jumping-off point but not as the end destination. 

After the bustling holiday season, EveryAction is here to wish you a happy and healthy 2020. Make sure you take time in January to analyze your progress. Ask yourself what worked well and what could have been done better. Going into a new year (and a new decade!) is a great time to take stock of your efforts to ensure your leveraging digital resources to your greatest advantage.  

EOY infographic