Your year-end plan is actively insulting a segment of your donor file. It's September and that plan is nearly locked, so let's fix it before it goes out.
When I was a baby ED, we'd get a $7,500 check from Schwab Charitable in December and I'd code it to Schwab. Not to Susan, who actually made the gift. In my file, Susan looked like she'd bought a gala ticket. She was a major donor and I never once treated her like one, because I didn't know what a DAF was and neither did the person doing my data entry. You probably have Susans right now, sitting in your database dressed up as corporations.
Here's what most fundraisers miss: a DAF donor already took her tax deduction the day the money went into the fund. February and December are the same day to her. So every countdown clock and midnight-tonight email you send that segment is factually wrong, and she knows it. It makes you look like an amateur.
In this episode I give you the CRM screen to run this week, the four behavioral signals that flag someone holding a DAF who's never given you one, and why I'd rather run this play in January. Everyone decided December was the Super Bowl. January is the empty field. Keep your annual fund calendar exactly as it is, your major gift calendar is a different animal.
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