Year-End Giving Campaign Planner for Nonprofits (Excel)

Year-end targets set without a segment plan tend to reveal their gap in mid-December, when there's no time left to add another appeal wave.

• A projection from your own history is quick to build:
• List your segments, such as current, lapsed and monthly donors.
• Count the contacts in each.
• Next to each, write your own response rate and average gift, from last year if you have it.
• Multiply contacts by response rate by average gift.
• Add the segments up and compare the total with the target.

The gap is the useful part. It tells you, before December, whether to add a segment, raise an ask or change the target.

In our sample file, 540 lapsed donors at 8% and an average gift of 85 give 43 gifts and 3,655 projected. Six segments reach 28,680 against a 48,000 target, so the plan covers 60%.

Our Year-End Giving Campaign Planner for Excel and Google Sheets does this arithmetic for up to 15 segments, with no industry benchmarks built in. Every date counts back from a close date you choose, appeal waves are flagged Late or After mail cutoff, and a 12-step closeout compares results with the projection.

The projections are arithmetic on your assumptions, and the dates are never tax, legal or postal deadlines.