Free · Certificate included
Year-End Giving Campaigns
Run a year-end campaign that captures the season of generosity.
What you’ll learn
- Build a year-end calendar from Giving Tuesday through December 31
- Write a multi-touch appeal series with the right email cadence
- Create urgency that drives December and deadline-day gifts
- Run a matching-gift challenge and segment lapsed vs. active donors
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Create a free account →Course outline
- 1
Why December owns your year
If you only run one great campaign all year, run it in December.
5 min Quiz Interactive - 2
The year-end calendar: GivingTuesday to Dec 31
A year-end campaign is not one email — it’s a sequence that builds from late November to midnight on December 31.
6 min Quiz Interactive - 3
Multi-touch beats one-and-done
The single biggest year-end mistake is the one-and-done appeal — a lone email, sent once, then silence.
5 min Quiz Interactive - 4
Email cadence & the December 31 deadline
Email is the engine of a year-end campaign, and cadence — how many emails, when, and how they escalate — is what makes it work.
6 min Quiz Interactive - 5
Matching challenges & segmenting your list
Two levers can dramatically raise year-end results: a matching-gift challenge that doubles donors’ impact, and segmentation that sends the right message to lapsed vs.
6 min Quiz Interactive - 6
Storytelling, urgency & planning the timeline
Cadence and segmentation deliver the email; story and urgency are what make a donor actually give.
5 min Quiz Interactive - 7
Measuring & running it like a pro
A year-end campaign isn’t over at midnight on December 31 — you measure it, thank donors fast, and capture what you learned for next year.
4 min Interactive
Sources & further reading
- M+R — M+R Benchmarks (annual online fundraising study)
- GivingTuesday Data Commons — GivingTuesday 2024 Record-Breaking Results
- Double the Donation — Corporate Giving and Matching Gift Statistics
- Neon One — Year-End Giving Statistics Every Fundraiser Should Know
- Bonterra (Network for Good) — Year-End Fundraising Guidance for Nonprofits
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