NUMBER 1: If you have been recently awarded your 501 C 3 Nonprofit status from the IRS. Go to GuideStar and update your information.
This company does not inform nonprofits that they have uploaded your information from the IRS into their database that donors use to find information about nonprofit organizations. Worse: on the very front page of your company's information page. In lieu of your mission statement you will see: "This organization has not provided GuideStar with a mission statement." As if somehow you were supposed to intuit they had done this.
It is unfortunate that you must play along with their schtick but you do as thousand of potential donors are sent to this database to find information about donors. If they don't find any information about you and worse, information that looks like you've been derelict, you can kiss that donation goodbye.
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DON’T LIMIT YOUR FUNDRAISING TO #Giving Tuesdays.
Many fundraising authorities advise small local nonprofits to not even waste their efforts on participating in these campaigns.
The people behind #GivingTuesday are in it for the right reasons. But for small and mid-sized nonprofit organizations who don’t have lots of extra time or staff to run projects and campaigns that aren’t going to pan out, it’s a waste of their time and money. Here are a few of the reasons that expert fundraisers give:
1. Your Message Will Get Crowded Out
Non-profit direct mail fundraisers know that one of the worst times to send a fundraising letter for a charity is in the couple of weeks before a major election. Why? Because the candidates and their supporters are going to be flooding mailboxes with oversized postcards, self-mailers, and every other type of direct mail communication possible.
Take a cue from direct mail experts, and send your fundraising communications on a day when your communication can be the star of the show… not a day like #GivingTuesday when you will be one of dozens of requests your donors receive.
2. Giving Tuesday is Primarily a social media activity.
Social media is good for sending people over to your organization’s website by posting links to interesting, compelling and informative content. Then, when donors click over to your website, you should be doing everything possible to get them to give you their email address—by signing up for your newsletter or to receive a free e-book or some giveaway. Email is still the killer fundraising app on the Web. Read Figuring Out Your Non-Profit’s Social Media Strategy to learn how to use social media the right way for fundraising.
3. Giving Tuesday encourages spot giving.
Spot giving tactics are fundraising strategies that encourage one time gifts or gifts that are so tied to an external event as to take them out of the normal giving pattern for a non-profit’s donors.
4. You won’t raise a lot of money on Giving Tuesday.
In 2012 donors gave over $10 million to nonprofits online on #GivingTuesday. However, $10 millions spread out over thousands of nonprofit organizations is not that much—especially considering the lion’s share of the donations go to the larger fish in the sea who have both the time and the money to launch more extensive media appeals.
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SOURCE FOR SOME OF THIS INFORMATION: [http://www.thefundraisingauthority.com/fundraising-ideas/avoid-giving-tuesday/ Accessed 7/29/2019 at 7:18 AM}
Recommended Reading:
How to Raise More Money for Any Non-Profit.
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GET AHEAD OF THE CROWD
Send out your solicitations and plan your fundraising drives for late July to early August. If you are a small local nonprofit, then make as much of your appeal face to face with small local businesses. Like you, they too are small fish in an ocean filled with big box competition. You are not going to have much appeal at a national level and you not going to have a lot of appeal even at a regional level when you are competing head on with large multinational nonprofits such as Habitat for Humanity or the Cancer Society.