September 2025: The First 5 Steps to Year-End Planning
From where I'm sitting, September is glorious. Mornings and evenings are cooling down here in New Hampshire, but the sun is still shining most days. Leaves are just starting to turn. Bake Off is back, and Survivor returns in two weeks. Ahhh…
It’s also the start of the year-end campaign planning season, which I personally love. The six nonprofits in our Done by December group cohort are making great progress! Here's what they’re tackling—and my recommended order of operations—as you get started:
The first 5 steps to plan for year-end:
1. Goals, then theme
Too many nonprofits come up with a catchy slogan for a campaign, then try to smoosh everything else around it. Instead, set a primary fundraising goal and one or two secondary goals (maybe related to re-engaging lapsed donors, acquiring new donors, increasing your average gift amount, or monthly giving). Then brainstorm themes and slogans that support your goals.
2. Messaging & Case For Support
Every successful fundraising campaign has a clear, emotive case for support. If you’re not confident in your own copywriting abilities, share your campaign goals and theme with ChatGPT and ask it to draft a thorough case for support in line with philanthropic psychology best practices.
3. Identify impact stories and how you’ll capture them
As I know you know, story collection can take months. So start now. Think of the 3-5 families, animals, community projects, etc. that have been most transformational this year and align with your campaign theme. Decide how you will share these stories (ideally with a video component, even if it’s a member of your team on camera) and start reaching out to people now to capture the content.
4. Set up a new donation page
I always recommend a separate donation page for your year-end campaign with its own messaging, look & feel, and suggested gift amounts. Check out my latest iDonate article on ways to reduce friction on your donation page for a few tips that may be counterintuitive…
5. Build a content calendar + segmentation plan
The year-end season really starts in October with “priming content” that demonstrates impact, educates supporters on key issues, and teases your campaign theme so it doesn’t feel out of the blue on December 1st.
Map out the emails you’ll send in October, November, December, and January. Focus December on those great stories you're collecting!
Then, use your email calendar to make a plan for your other channels. Can you repurpose some of those emails as social media posts? Use the story videos for ads? Send one text message a month to emphasize your best content? Having this all planned out will make content creation a helluva lot easier.
The other critical layer: your segmentation plan. Who should be excluded from certain emails, ads, or mailers? Who should receive a slightly different version of some of this content? Get this all mapped out so you can create and schedule content in batches.
By the end of September, our cohort crew will have all of the above done. Some will even have their impact stories in hand.
In October, they'll draft cornerstone campaign content (e.g., direct mail piece, most important emails, ad copy) and add final touches to their campaign plans— to leverage the energy of their most devoted fans, and delight donors.
I’ve got a free campaign planning workbook if you need help moving through this process, along with a campaign messaging workbook to help you nail down (donor-approved) language.
Side note: Are you receiving donations via ChatGPT and other AI search tools?
I put out a LinkedIn poll last month, and was surprised that a whopping 84% of respondents either don’t know or haven’t received any donations from ChatGPT yet.
I recommend taking a look at your donation Source report for the last few months, either in your fundraising platform or analytics platform. You may be surprised to see “ChatGPT” or other AI tools pop up on that list!
Here’s a more in-depth guide from Whole Whale for those of you who are a little nerdier. 🤓
I'm booked until February or March of next year, but happy to slot in a 1:1 call when my schedule allows if you have specific questions or want another set of eyes on a campaign plan.
Wishing you the very best with year-end planning, 2026 budgeting, and all the rest!
-Caroline
