Grow Your Annual Fund with Targeted Appeals (It Works for Us!)

Annual funds are crucial to the success of a nonprofit. They’re an incredible pool of unrestricted funds that can support your mission, keep the lights on, and pay your staff. But how do we as nonprofit fundraisers go about getting those coveted unrestricted dollars? Here’s how targeted appeals are working for us:

• Promoting matching gifts
• Focusing on a theme
• Experimenting with AI

I am the Development Manager for After School Matters (ASM), a medium-large nonprofit that provides after-school programs for high school teenagers in Chicago. One of my primary goals over the past three years has been creating a donor appeal process to generate revenue for our annual fund, using Blackbaud fundraising software to help us accomplish our goals. ASM is blessed to have great relationships with corporations throughout the city, but we are still getting our individual donor program off the ground. More specifically, we are increasingly interested in attracting casual donors: a person on the street who hears about our work and decides to donate $10 every now and again.

Ours is a common challenge for social-good organizations. Attracting and retaining new donors is a goal of every nonprofit since unrestricted funds are essential to our operations. At After School Matters, we engage new individual donors through a series of four donor appeals throughout the year: one in spring, fall, summer, and one at the end of the year. Each appeal, mailed to a segmented list of potential new and past donors, includes an inspiring story about ASM’s impact as well as an easy donation link.

Read on to see how we have been able to grow our annual fund with targeted appeals, increasing our dollars raised per appeal, boosting engagement with our social media content, and multiplying click-through rates on our appeal emails.

Matching Gifts Are Key

For each appeal, ask a major donor to agree to sponsor a matching gift. It seems self-evident, but it really does go a long way! For example, the ASM fundraising team knows that our biggest appeal is around the holiday season; in preparation each fall, we approach a few noteworthy donors and ask them to consider a matching gift up to a certain amount.

Once the match is confirmed, we advertise it everywhere: on every social media post, every appeal email, every mailed appeal—we make sure that casual donors can’t miss it! People love seeing their money go twice as far and are more likely to give if they know their $100 donation can impact $200 worth of programs.

Keep Appeals Focused on a Theme

Every After School Matters appeal is a multiweek engagement push, with each week spotlighting a different aspect of our mission. Every week is connected through a common theme to make the entire project feel cohesive to our donors. For example, the internal theme of our summer appeal was “How ASM Prepares Teens for Life After High School.” Over three weeks, we highlighted our college readiness program, then our career exploration program, and finally wrapped the appeal with an email about how our summer programs prepare teens for life’s next steps.

Because you’re appealing to both existing and new donors, make sure your website’s homepage and donation page capture not only your broader mission, but also echo the theme of your appeal. An on-brand, on-theme concise elevator pitch on all points of entry will help online donors connect at a glance with your cause.

And it never hurts to repeat the impact of your mission. For instance, our appeals remind donors that ASM teens are two times more likely to graduate high school than their peers, and that 96% of teens in the program have plans after graduation.

Remember, a theme keeps your appeal-creation process focused and on track!

AI Is Your Friend, Especially with Donor Outreach

We send our annual fund appeal emails to thousands of people, so it’s easy for them to end up in a donor’s spam folder. To combat this problem, I make it a habit to follow up with donors who have given to past campaigns. Even something as simple as a friendly greeting and personal invitation to read the appeal or visit a program site can go a long way! Sometimes they don’t donate immediately, but the personalized gesture will help the donor remember our organization when they do decide to give.

I suggest trying out AI for this. It might seem counterintuitive to rely on technology to personalize and humanize your appeal outreach, but AI is a great tool to help simplify the follow-up process! Using a generative AI tool like ChatGPT, simply prompt the software to “write a follow-up email to a donor.” Then, all you need to do is edit until you’re happy with the final product.

You can prompt generative AI to write email subject lines, text messages, and direct mail letters targeted to your segmented lists. I also recommend using AI to rephrase a sentence you’ve written that doesn’t sound quite right. Embracing new technologies can be nerve-wracking but creatively using AI can save you a great deal of time and spark new ideas.

Have Some Fun with It!

As you build your annual fund by appealing to individual donors, don’t be afraid to get creative! Throughout the year, the ASM fundraising team uses our spring, summer, and fall appeals as opportunities to experiment and fine-tune our approach, so that our final year-end appeal is the best possible showcase of our creativity and strategy. Our creative analysis of previous appeals can take many forms and we test the performance of multiple variables. For instance, we might change the location of the donation button, switch up where a staff member signs the email, or try out video-based appeals. Any alteration to our appeals provides valuable insight into what our donors most respond to, helping us boost our click-through and open rates.   

When you use the A/B style of analysis, it’s best to test just one thing at a time. Also, before launching any new appeal or alteration to your previous campaign, test your donation links and buttons with staff members to make sure they’re easy to use and functioning properly.

Finally, remember to keep it simple! The trick is to balance creativity with brevity. Every day, people are inundated with hundreds of emails. A sure-fire way to make sure yours sticks out is to include plenty of pictures and short, snappy text.

Good luck and happy appeal writing!