The holiday season is the biggest time of year for charitable giving. During this time of year, it’s important to have a strong campaign to engage your donors and encourage them to give. For alumni associations, this means connecting with your alumni and maintaining good, open lines of communication and strong relationships.

Here are a few tips to help you improve your communications this holiday season to boost your donation numbers.

• Be consistent with your communications: If you’re only reaching out to alumni during the holiday season to solicit donations, you probably won’t see great results. It’s important to be consistent with your communication all year long, to build strong relationships with your alumni and to send them information about a wide range of opportunities and items beyond just donation opportunities. If your alumni feel like you’re just using them for donations, then they’re not going to be as willing to give.
• Create a theme for your campaign: Having a single, unifying theme for your campaign during the holidays can help increase engagement. Given the nature of schooling this year with the COVID-19 pandemic, one theme might be supporting specific online education initiatives. But whatever you go with, having a theme or a purpose behind the campaign will be more effective than just putting out open-ended calls for financial support.
• Analyze your donor segments: If possible, split up your contacts based on certain donor criteria so you can send more personalized messages, which will increase your yield. You should be able to divide your list based on gift frequency, donor age, average gift amount or previous campaigns to which they have contributed. Using this information, you will be able to see who is most likely to donate this time around, and which messages tend to encourage them the most.
• Change up call to action messages: If you send out multiple messages through the holiday season, be sure to change up your call to action messages so it doesn’t feel like you’re hammering away at your alumni to donate. You can still include messaging about your campaign, but specific calls to action can include following you on social media, supporting specific programs or connecting with/joining your alumni association.

Need some more tips to find success in your holiday season fundraising? Contact us today at Alumni Nations and we’ll be happy to lend you a hand!