The end-of-year appeal is the most significant single effort most organizations make to raise money from individuals. It's also an unmatched opportunity for you to connect with your stakeholders and let them know about your achievements from the past year and goals for the coming year.

The fall appeal can be a nightmare of procrastination, overwhelm and last-minute panic . . . or it can be your best chance to tell your story to your constituents.

For advice on how to plan, execute and follow up on this campaign, we turned to two of our favorite fundraisers: Lili Afkhami, Development Director at the League of American Bicyclists, and Tarrell Wright, Development Director at Cascade Bicycle Club. In a Mutual Aid Webinar on Wednesday, September 24, they shared their tips for planning direct mail campaigns to increase response rates, get average donations closer to your targets, and turn some of your annual donors into full-engaged major donors.

Missed the webinar? No problem. You can view the whole video here, or keep reading for highlights.

2014-09-24 from Alliance for Biking & Walking on Vimeo.

Lili says:

• Ideally, your direct mail campaign should start ("drop") in late October, so you should begin work NOW if you haven't already
• The three critical components of a direct mail package are: the letter, the remittance slip (the card or form that donors fill out and return with their donation), and the outer envelope. Members can see a sample letter with Lili's annotations in the members-only Alliance Resource Library.
• A return envelope is a nice thing to include, though can be eliminated from the package if you need to keep your budget low. If you do include a reply envelope, consider pre-stamping it as a service to select donors. 
• Premiums (gifts sent to the donor as incentives or thanks for their donation) can inspire higher initial response rates, but can also encourage donors to view their donation as a transaction rather than a philanthropic gift. Lili's advice is to use premiums sparingly, if at all.

Tarrell says:

• In her experience at Cascade Bicycle Club, the end-of-year direct mail campaign was so much more successful than the mid-year campaign that CBC discontinued the mid-year campaign altogether.
• Though direct mail is one of the least cost-effective ways to raise money, it is still an important component of a balanced fundraising strategy. Direct mail campaigns provide an opportunity to identify donors who have the potential to become major donors and long-term supporters of your organization. For example, any first-time gift of $250 or more to Cascade automatically flags the donor as a major gift prospect and catalyzes a more in-depth cultivation process.
• Whenever possible, reference a donor's prior gift and ask for a specific amount based on that gift. Cascade's rule of thumb is to ask for the same amount two years in a row and then increase the ask in the third year. Lili chimed in to add that if you can customize the "ask string" (the list of suggested donation amounts), put your target donation amount for each donor in the middle of the ask string, as people are most comfortable choosing a middle option.

Additional resources:

• We're big fans of communications expert Kivi Leroux Miller and her site, NonprofitMarketingGuide.com. You can read her blog posts, download her ebooks and guides, or register for her webinars to learn more about communications and fundraising.
• The Fundraising Page in the Alliance Resource Library contains some of the documents that were referenced in the webinar, along with other samples of direct mail appeals and links to even more helpful resources on individual fundraising (scroll to Section V: Individual Giving).

Read the full tipsheet below or in the members-only Alliance Resource Library.