Fundraising calendars help keep nonprofits on track throughout the year

Communication is key when running a non-profit, or any organization for that matter. Keeping your stakeholders, donors, and the community you serve up-to-date on your events is a critical element to your success and fundraising efforts. Maintaining a fundraising and event calendar will serve to get your non-profit to stay on track and keep everyone on the same page as you look to bring in more funds to help support your overall missions and specific goals.

A fundraising calendar will allow you to track correspondences with donors, fundraising campaigns, special events, and other important timelines and dates throughout the year. It will offer you and your team an ongoing tool to provide an overview of your fundraising and outreach strategies.

What to Include in Your Non-Profit Fundraising Calendar?

A fundraising calendar for your nonprofit is so much more than a place to keep track of when the next meeting is. It is a living document that holds a wealth of information that can be shared throughout your staff and others involved in the organization. These calendars are designed to be flexible and adaptable to additions and changes from day to day, month to month.

Hard Deadlines for Key Goals, Important Dates

Once your non-profit goals and objectives have been established for the coming year, you can begin to populate your fundraising calendar with hard deadlines for your most important dates and milestones. Among the events that should be the first to go on your calendar include:

  • Major fundraising events and annual galas
  • Year-end fundraising campaign markers
  • Additional fundraising events
  • Regular board meetings
  • Networking, community events

These items form the foundation of your fundraising calendar for the upcoming year. You can build out from there and flesh out the specifics, adding other events and important dates from there.

Actionable Items

Next up, you will want to expand your base entries to include more detailed timelines to ensure your efforts stay on course and all involved parties are kept in the loop throughout the process of organizing your most important events.

Examine each of your baseline events and calendar items to decide how and when these items will come together. Get as detailed as you can, assigning responsibilities for tasks so all areas are covered. Considerations should include:

  • Promotional timeline for large events and galas
  • Volunteer needs and responsibilities
  • Invitation process and timeline
  • Thanking donors for their contributions and involvement
  • How, when, and who will contact potential donors

Communication Strategies

This is your chance to plot out communication strategies just as you would any other event or calendar item. Depending on the size of your organization and the scope of your fundraising goals, you can set up weekly, monthly, or quarterly plans to reach out and engage with past and potential donors. Assigning specific communication tasks to individual team members will get everyone involved and enable you to track your efforts more efficiently with complete transparency.

Creating monthly or bi-monthly themes for your fundraising plans will focus and unity as you work to achieve your short-term and long-range goals. Set aside a month to make sure all donors have been properly recognized and thanked for their contributions. Spend another month telling compelling stories of how your beneficiaries have been served by your organization.

Slow Seasons for Non-Profit Fundraising

The road to reaching your fundraising goals is not a straight line. There are often regular periods throughout the year when activity and donations will hit a lull. Annual trends should be clearly marked on your calendar so you can anticipate when things slow down.

It is critical to continue the communication pipeline during these times so people will keep you fresh in their minds. Use the slower times to use blogs, videos, email campaigns, and other forms of content to share your stories and the work your organization has accomplished. Always include links back to your website’s donation page to make it easy for them to contribute when the content inspires them.

Get the Community Involved

We are all in this together. Allowing other non-profit organizations access to your calendar to cross-promote their own events will help both of you expand your reach and create a tighter bond throughout the community.

Intrackt Helps Nonprofits Communicate and Grow

Intrackt has a team of industry professionals that can help your non-profit organization keep communication channels open to attract the largest numbers of potential donors. Our impressive team of veteran digital marketers and non-profit specialists will partner with you to create an effective fundraising calendar that will track your progress and successes throughout the year.

Contact a knowledgeable professional at Intrackt for complete information on the wide range of services we offer for non-profit organizations like yours to compete in today’s crowded and highly competitive market.