#21 Christmas is coming!

Good news, Christmas is coming! With that, your fundraising, marketing, supporter care, donation processing and volunteer teams are working like beavers to be ready for the Christmas Appeal and all the donations that will flood in with it. But spare a thought and a couple of actions for your F2F teams.

Our shopping centres have just got a whole lot more expensive to fundraise in with no measurable improvement in results. Your fundraisers are feeling the pressure and are facing a common objection, “I can’t afford it, Christmas is coming”.

Okay, so your fundraiser will probably tell the donor that "nothing starts until January, so you have time to save", but there are a few things you can do for them.

Here are a few bullet points that can improve your f2f fundraising over the next month:

• Train your team with all the information around your Christmas Appeal

• Send your suppliers a list of the shopping centres that have your Christmas Appeal posters up

• Speak to your corporate partners to leverage your relationship and get a free/discounted spot in their shopping centre, outside their store or at their airport

• Give the fundraisers extra gifts to hand-out to newly acquired donors. Nothing too expensive, just a Christmas themed freebie

• Send your fundraisers a card and their office a gift

Get on these and give your teams a fighting chance this year. If it’s too late for this year, write a line in the budget and prepare for Christmas 2018.

Happy Fundraising.