Can you believe it’s already December 17?

With holidays around the corner and more time on our side, it’s important to look back, examine our experiences, and celebrate our wins.

We don’t do that enough, do we?

Remember, the work you do for your nonprofit plays a fundamental role in feeding, healing, protecting, housing, educating, inspiring, enlightening, and nurturing our community.

Today, I’m on a mission to celebrate YOU and the accomplishments you made in 2023.

Let’s dig in.

What we learned in 2023

We began 2023 by setting our intentions. Mine was “adventure.” How did you do? Begin thinking about your intention for 2024. We’ll cover it in the new year.

In early 2023, we saw the massive rise of generative AI. I shared a glimpse into how tools like ChatGPT can help, limit, and become a new tool for the work you need to accomplish. We’ll delve into this more in 2024.

We moved into creating a value ladder framework as a first step toward acquiring new donors, helping to move your audience through different levels of engagement that all lead to their donation.

Once your audience showed up and you shared the value of your organization's work, you began to see a steady stream of new donors signing up to learn more. You continued building your community.

With spring in the air, we got stuck into the ultimate communications tool, email marketing. From automating your welcome series to writing a powerful call-to-action, you learned how to create a list of interested supporters.

One of the most opened emails of the year was the second step of email marketing, improving your subject line. What good is an email if nobody opens it? The four-step framework helped you drive engagement and get more opens on your emails.

Then, we reached out to your audience through feedback loops - surveys and questionnaires provide fantastic ways to gather audience insights through essential data and donor feedback.

In early August, we peered into one of the most critical parts of your fundraising strategy - donor stewardship. We examined five simple strategies to steward our donors, online style.

Then we measured impact, said goodbye to cold calls, and the second most opened email of the year, a UTM strategy to drive donor acquisition. I’m sure it’s because it included everyone’s favourite topic, acquisition.

One of my favourite emails that I sent was optimizing your top online asset: your nonprofit’s website. I shared seven ways to optimize your site by providing clarity and straightforward navigation for web traffic. Your year-end depended on it.

Next, you prepared for the biggest giving season of the year when I shared a step-by-step guide on building a landing page for your Giving Tuesday campaign. From hero sections to stories of impact, landing pages deliver what you want to share with your audience.

Preparing for year-end, we unlocked social media and used it as a starting point to attract new donors. Remember that social media is still (mostly) free and allows you to cultivate a community that helps advance your mission.

We closed out the year with more love for donor stewardship and zoomed in on social proof - a new ingredient that helps improve online growth. It works!

Grateful for You

Thank you for being here! I’m honoured that you’ve subscribed to this newsletter and spend a few minutes with me every other week.

My mission is to support and coach you on your digital journey by sharing relevant content you can use immediately to advance your skills.

In 2024, I intend to show up more often. Look forward to more stories, more opportunities for your growth, and more simple ways to fundraise online.

If you have a burning topic you’d like to hear more about, hit reply and share—the best ideas come from you.

We covered a tremendous amount of information in 2023. Need a boost for where to begin? Hit reply, let's chat or set up a meeting here.

Link 💜🎄

Want to capture your audience’s attention instantly? Typeframes make it easy to create videos and make editing incredibly easy while offering all sorts of customization options. Free tools inside.

Need more accountability in 2024? Take a look at the Streaks app. It’s a to-do list that helps you form good habits. Every day you complete a task, you extend your streak. You can choose or create up to 24 tasks to meet.

The link with the most clicks in 2023 deserves a mention - The State of Nonprofit Donation Pages. From Next After and Raise Donors, this link looks at the online giving experience of 203 nonprofits.

Thanks for reading this far! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year! See you in 2024. ✌🏼