Your donors are willing to 
give more than they gave you last December.

How you ask decides whether they do.

Year-End, Handled.

Now through December 31st, we're on your team.

This year Chris Davenport and Josh Alcorn will work on your year-end campaign with you, so more of your donors give, and the ones who give, give more.

So here's what we're offering.

We sit at the table with you while your year-end campaign comes together, all the way through December.

We're Chris Davenport and Josh Alcorn. Chris founded the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference and has spent 19 years helping organizations raise more money. Josh co-produces the conference and hosts Tactical Thursdays, so you may have already spent a Thursday or two with him.

The table is a real one. Every week a group of fundraisers gets on Zoom with us and works on what they're about to send. It's called Nonprofit Storytelling Pro.

Your seat is open from the day you join through December 31. In that time, we’ll help you find the story, write the letter, build the emails, fix the donation page, and figure out which major donors to contact, what to ask them for, and how to approach them.

Come with a draft, a rough idea, or nothing but a date on the calendar. We’ll help you take it from there and get your year-end fundraising out the door.

When the year closes, your campaign will be finished, and you'll know it's the strongest one you've sent.

"We followed Chris and Josh's advice and met our goal. In fact, we more than tripled, if not quadrupled, what the same campaign did last year."
~ Jenny Darlington-Person, Executive Director, Arts Council of Placer County

We build every campaign the same way. One week at a time, and we're at the table for all of it. That's how this works. You won't be carrying it by yourself.

We can't tell you what you'll raise. No two lists are the same. What we can tell you is that donors give more when the story makes them care and the offer makes it clear what their gift does. That's what we'll help you build.

Year-End, Handled · $3,800

Six decisions that decide how much you raise

Most year-end campaigns are won or lost in a handful of decisions. These are the ones we help you get right.

The letter sounds fine.
There's nothing obviously wrong with it, and that's the problem. It sounds like an organization explaining its work instead of one person asking another person for help. A donor can agree with every word and still set it down. We find where it went flat and fix it.

Your donors understand. They don't care yet.
Understanding a need isn't the same as being moved to meet it. Most letters explain the problem well and then ask for a gift before the donor has a reason to care. Your loyal donors will give anyway. The gifts you're missing are from the people who needed to feel something first, and the bigger gifts your loyal donors might have made. We work on the part that turns understanding into caring.

You wrote it to be read. Donors will scan it.
They see a headline, a few bold words, the first sentence, and maybe the P.S. What they take in during those first seconds decides whether they read the rest and reach for their checkbook. We look at your letter the way a donor will and strengthen the parts that decide whether they give.

The offer is vague.
"Support our year-end campaign" doesn't tell a donor what their gift does. They give out of loyalty or they don't give at all. We help you name something specific enough that a donor knows exactly what they're funding.

The ask got softened.
You've read your own letter so many times that being direct starts to feel pushy. So the ask gets qualified, moved down the page, wrapped in a sentence about how grateful you'd be. The donor reads it and isn't sure you meant it. We help you ask plainly without feeling rude.

You chose the story your organization loves.
It might show the size of the problem, or prove how well your programs work, or be the one everyone inside is proudest of. The story that impresses your team isn't always the story that moves a donor. We help you find the one that raises the money.

These are the decisions that shape the campaign. We'll tell you which ones are costing you gifts, and then we'll fix them with you.

"I followed the process, trusted the feedback, and it worked. The appeal had a monumental response. We got more checks, more forms back, gifts from people who hadn't given in years, and increased gifts from current donors."
~ Janet Kleyn, President & CEO, Agape Villages Foster Family Agency

We're live four days a week

Tuesdays: Reviews and Strategies

Open sessions with both of us. Whatever's in front of you is what we work on. Your plan, your story, your offer, your letter, your emails, your giving page, your major donor outreach. We talk it through, look at the work, and figure out the next move with you.

Other fundraisers are at the table too, and you can show up and just listen. That matters more than you'd expect, because somebody else always asks the question you didn't know you had.

Wednesdays: Write-It Wednesdays

Time on your calendar to actually write. You show up, you work, and we're right there when you get stuck. Most fundraising meetings send you home with more notes and less time. You'll leave this one with words on the page.

Thursdays: Tactical Thursdays

Josh brings in a guest and opens it up for Q&A. This one is free and anyone can join, so we won't pretend it's a perk. We're mentioning it because it means there are four days a week we're in a room together.

Fridays: Reviews and Strategies

Same as Tuesdays. Whatever's in front of you is what we work on. Your plan, your story, your offer, your letter, your emails, your giving page, your major donor outreach. We talk it through, look at the work, and figure out the next move with you.

Come to all of them, come to one, or skip a week when you're moving along fine on your own. There's no curriculum here to fall behind on.

What you'll have at the end

• A campaign goal and a plan you can explain to your board in two minutes
• An offer that tells donors exactly what their gift makes possible
• A story that makes them care before you ask
• Your primary letter, finished
• The email sequence around it
• Giving page language that keeps the message going instead of dropping it
• A calendar showing what goes out and when
• A campaign that got looked at hard before your donors ever saw it

"Pro changed the way we approach fundraising. Before, every appeal felt like we were starting from scratch. Now our fundraising is easier, clearer, and more focused. We have a purpose behind what we're doing, a structure we can follow, and much more confidence. We don't have to reinvent the wheel every time we write an appeal."
~ Eric Steigerwald, Senior Director of Marketing & Program Development, Bring Magic to Kids in Hospitals

Story. Offer. Ask.

Everything we build with you runs on three questions.

Story. Why should this donor care?

Offer. What does their gift make possible?

Ask. What do you want them to do?

Campaigns usually skip the part about getting a donor to care.  And then organizations wonder why the Ask didn't work well. During your year end campaign, you'll use Story Offer Ask to write messages more of your donors will respond to.

Year-end won't be the only thing on your desk

Between now and December there'll be thank-you letters, monthly giving messages, major donor notes, event invitations, stewardship emails, landing pages, and a board presentation somebody dropped on you with a week's notice.

None of that gets set aside because we're working on the year-end campaign. If it's in front of you, we work on it with you. If you fundraise with it, we'll help you make it stronger.

Pro has helped us move toward a more donor-focused plan for our fundraising. We’ve improved our appeals and newsletters, added new things like urgent e-appeals and a gift catalog, and raised money in ways we had never tried before.
~ Kimberlee Casavan, Operations & Fundraising Manager, Copper River Watershed Project

Year-End Major Donor Plan

Year-end is also when you reach out personally to the donors who could give more.

We'll help you figure out which major donors to focus on, who should make the call, what the conversation should be about, what to ask for, and how all of it fits with the campaign you're already sending.

What you end up with is a plan your team can actually use in the last months of the year.

Who you're working with

Chris Davenport founded the Nonprofit Storytelling Conference and wrote Stories That Raise Money. He came out of documentary filmmaking, which is where he learned that people don't act because they understand something. They act because they care.

Josh Alcorn hosts Tactical Thursdays and works with fundraisers every day on their letters, emails, and campaign plans. He's the one who'll tell you the thing you didn't want to hear about your draft. He'll also be right.

We read fundraising letters every week. Most of them break in the same few places, and we can show you where yours does before your donors ever see it.

Every organization at our table runs a year-end campaign, and every fall we work on them one after another. We know what the last eight weeks of the year feel like from the inside.

This is a good fit if

• You're starting your year-end campaign from a blank page
• You already have one and you know it could be better
• You want someone to look at the important pieces before they go out
• You'd rather have help when you need it than a course you have to keep up with
• You want to see how other nonprofits are solving the same problems you are

Your investment

Year-End, Handled. $3,800. Or four payments of $995.

Your seat runs from the day you join through December 31.

Enrollment is capped at 20 organizations, because what you're buying is our time and there's only so much of it.

One more thing

We don't hand you a course and wish you luck.

You decide what to work on. We help you do it. And then you send the best year-end campaign your organization has ever sent.