Those end-of-year charitable fundraising emails are coming thick and fast. My inbox is full of subject lines like, “Midnight is just hours away,” “Last chance: Gifts doubled,” “Before midnight,” “Really, we mean it this time — last chance to match,” and “Last chance to give in 2012.”

They’re starting to all look alike — and no wonder. The senders have likely run out of creative ideas, given that this inbox-influx represents only the latest in a sustained flow of emails that every nonprofit has been pouring out for the last several weeks. All with good reason, of course: As you’ve heard many times before (including in my blog on “Motivations for Holiday Charitable Giving“) about a third of all donations are made during the final weeks of the year.

But maybe the similarity in subject lines is okay. By now, the readers should have a good idea of what your nonprofit does, and whether they deem it worthy of support (though this is certainly something you want to include convincing information on in the body of the email). If your nonprofit can’t stand out from the pack in this slew of emails, it can at least establish its presence there. That will be handy for the people who are making their final decisions about giving, and thinking, “Hmm, I think X nonprofit should get something from me — maybe there’s an email here with a handy link I can click.” A good part of fundraising is, after all, about making it easy to give.

My one pet peeve is with nonprofits that make it sound like the end of the world is coming, and that anyone who doesn’t give by midnight will lose their chance FOREVER. It’s just a tax deduction, folks. Not all charitable donors itemize their deductions in the first place. Plus, the same nonprofits will be asking for donations again in 2013. Hopefully with a few days’ break on the email front.

As someone who donates to charity at random times throughout the year, I had always assumed that the end-of-year flood from other donors was due to the need to rack up points with the IRS come next April. Wrong!

As the American Red Cross found in a survey last year, four out five Americans feel that “helping someone less fortunate is an important part of their holiday tradition.” (And we probably all know by now that upwards of a third of all charitable donations are made during the final weeks of the year, so this is more than just talk.)

Well, then. If your nonprofit wasn’t already ramped up for end-of-year appeals, you’ve got one more reason to get energized about it. Of course, you’ve got a lot of competition — every nonprofit in the universe is pumping out appeals of every form, in writing, through email, and via their social networks. But the statistics on end-of-year giving suggest something interesting — that these appeals will actually receive more focused attention from donors than usual.

Instead of acting like I usually do (ripping open the appeal envelope, start tossing bits toward the recycle bin, noticing a catchy line, reading a bit, and then perhaps, miracle of miracles, deciding to make a donation), holiday-season donors are actually starting out with the intention of making a donation. It’s just a matter of to which organizations, and what share of their intended amount will go to each. They may actually set aside time to review all the possibilities. Some families I know actually sit down with the kids, let each person make a case for their favorite causes, and make a joint decision as to which groups they’ll donate to.

How to create the most effective appeals given this unique opportunity? For a helpful rundown of ideas from around the Web, read Ashley Halligan’s article on the Software Advice blog: How Your Nonprofit Can Capture December’s Giving Trend. 

It’s a problem that lawyers serving nonprofit organizations serving nonprofits see all too often: The nonprofit gets as far as figuring out which states it has been or will be soliciting charitable contributions in, takes the appropriate steps to register in those states, and then forgets that it’s in compliance only for the next 364 days. (For background on the basic requirements, see attorney Stephen Fishman’s article, “Fundraising Registration: Does Your Nonprofit Need to Register?“)

A nonprofit has to remember to re-register in every state where it will be fundraising. (It also, of course, needs to keep an eye on whether it has started raising money in states where it has never registered in the first place). All too often, however, the people who took care of registrations the first time around have left, or institutional memory otherwise fails — and the problem goes unnoticed until the nonprofit receives a “cease and desist” letter from the state in question.

This isn’t necessarily an end-of-year problem — the clock starts ticking whenever you first registered, which may have happened at different times for different states. Nevertheless, with mere months until you have to submit your next Form 990 to the IRS (in which you’ll probably need to name the states where you must register and have indeed registered, depending on which version of the form you fill out), be smart and doublecheck now on your group’s re-registration obligations.

Nolo’s book “Nonprofit Fundraising Registration: The 50-State Guide” can help with this process.

Or, you might want to consult an experienced nonprofit attorney with questions.

I thought I was a statistical outlier in absolutely, categorically refusing to sign up for regular, monthly donations to my favorite charities. To me, the idea sounds too similar to various times when I’ve gotten a free or low-cost magazine or newspaper subscription, only to find that turning off the tap was nigh on impossible.

Apparently, however, I’m not alone in my approach. Blackbaud’s November, 2012 “Donor Perspectives” survey found that among U.S. donors, 19% said that “nothing would compel them to become a regular donor to charities to which they currently make one-off donations.”

That’s a useful thing to know, given how many charities are pushing the idea of recurring donations. And why wouldn’t they, given the possibility of an ongoing income stream from donors who might not otherwise be able to afford such a large amount?

But let’s not go overboard chasing the possibility of recurring donations; for example, by failing to offer other methods of contributing. “Who would be silly enough to do that?” you ask. In fact, I was approached on the street by a volunteer for a major environmental organization who spent a long time trying to talk me into a recurring donation plan and then, when I said I was willing to make a one-time donation only, said they couldn’t do that! That was a waste of both our time.

The survey also reminds us that talking someone into a recurring donation isn’t the end of your interaction with them. Between 20% and 30% of those surveyed said that they’d stopped making recurring donations to at least one organization in the last three years. The most common reason was personal finances, which of course nonprofits can’t do anything about.

But the second most common reason was “a feeling that the charity was not making the best use of its financial resources.” That’s something the nonprofit can certainly do something about. I’ll bet those donors weren’t doing a careful analysis of the groups’ financials and Forms 990. More likely they were simply underwhelmed by the reports they were getting back from the group — or, dare I say, were upset by getting continued appeals for more money. It’s also possible that their expectations from the group in question were heightened, given their feeling that, “I’m paying the bills for this place.” How about making sure to regularly thank the recurring donors, give them specific information on how their recurring donation helps maintain and improve your group’s efforts, and hold off on the followup appeals?

Okay, let’s just all drop our collective jaws at the success of Strike Debt’s recent telethon, which raised money for a project it calls Rolling Jubilee. The group brought in a whopping $293,000 — enough, it figures, to buy $5.9 million in unpaid medical debt obligations off creditors, and thus save a lot of people from bankruptcy. (Around 62% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debts.) The group is calling it a “bailout for the 99 percent.”

Why did the fundraiser work so well? I’m sure much could be said about the organizing, skills, and determination of those running the telethon, but it also sounds like, in the words of the Village Voice, they “struck a nerve.” With the group’s origins in the Occupy movement, it tapped into Americans’ frustration at the crippling nature of debts that arose for reasons beyond their control.

Being able to point donors to the exact way in which their money would be used is an unusual feature of this fundraiser, as well.

Strike Debt is basically acting as the middleman to a person in need — which should be true of many nonprofits, but the link is often harder to demonstrate.

What’s more, donors are getting a “bargain” — their money doesn’t pay off another’s debt dollar for dollar, but is going to buy bad debts on the secondary market, where the creditors are typically willing to sell them off for pennies on the dollar. No wonder this one’s going viral!

I don’t know about you, but it feels like there’s a bit of space in my email inbox left behind now that all the campaign solicitations disappeared. But I’m sure it won’t last long.

Oops, my email inbox is filling up as fast as I write this. Savvy nonprofits are weighing in with subject lines like, “After Election Day: The Future of . . . ” and “What the Election Means for  . . . .”

Smart move on their part: We’re entering the most intense fundraising period of the year, in which the majority of individual donations to nonprofits are made. By grabbing readers’ attention with an email focused on subject matter rather than a need for donations, they are establishing themselves as a credible and valuable source of information. That credibility will prove crucial in the coming weeks, as they will (I’m sure) be coming back to me with requests for money.

If you haven’t planned your fundraising strategy for the coming weeks, here’s Kivi Leroux Miller offers “A Quick End-of-Year-Fundraising Plan” that’s worth reprising.

I stopped by my local Foundation Center library the other day, and asked which recent books they were most excited about. (By the way, if there’s a Foundation Center near you, it’s a great resource — free access to nonprofit-related books, advice, software to help you research funding sources, and more.)

The first book the librarian mentioned to me was  Boards on Fire! Inspiring Leaders to Raise Money Joyfully, by Susan Howlett. Dutifully, in order to bring you the latest news, I sat down and read it cover to cover.

Okay, I confess, this took me about half an hour. This book is SHORT! No, let’s call it compact. Lots of substance, no fluff. That’s enough to make me joyful right there, in a world where most authors seem to think they have to get their books to one inch thick to be credible.

The book contains some excellent points about how to overcome your board’s resistance to fundraising. Even if you’ve heard some of them before, it’s a fine refresher, or something to give to a friend who has become an E.D. or development director and feeling frustrated with the board.

Some of the points that stood out were:

• The usual reason that board members are unhappy fundraising is that they weren’t told ahead of time that this would be part of their responsibilities. But even the ones who feel this way can be brought into fundraising step by step, through development of genuine relationships with donors.
• Howlett discourages standard board member contributions upon entry, as well as “give or get” plans, on grounds that you don’t want the board members with greatest capacity to stop fundraising or giving at their “goal.”
• You can’t expect board members to ask others for money until they’ve learned about the organization in depth — its mission (beyond the tag line), its stories, where it fits into the community (including differences from the “competition”), what it actually achieves, and so forth.
• Board meetings can always be made more interesting! Put fundraising early on the agenda, have one board member per meeting share a “mission moment,” and serve food.
• The organization can model donor relations in its own relations with the board, by joyfully asking them for support, and thanking them well.

That’s not all; as I said, the book is already boiled down to the essentials, so I can’t do any further boiling. In any case, I’ve got to start working on shortening a book of my own.

The 2012 Fundraising Effectiveness Report from the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Urban Institute shows that while charities saw reduced donation totals in 2010 – with $105 lost due to departed donors and reduced gifts for every $100 gained in new or increased gifts — 2011 saw a return to flat levels of giving. So, the bleeding has stopped — but has the healing begun?

In one sense, no: Organizations are still losing more donors than they’re gaining (107 per 100 last year).  So nonprofits somehow aren’t heeding the old fundraising lesson, which the report reminds us of, that “Taking positive steps to reduce gift and donor losses is the least expensive strategy for increasing net fundraising gains.”

Then again — as if you didn’t have enough to worry about — the numbers do seem to show a surprising amount of energy around new donors. Is it because organizations have been doing more to reach out to new donors, or because a new pool of donors is responding to obvious societal need while others fall? Hard to say, but it looks like groups should continue whatever it is they’re doing right!

Regardless of trends, the key concept that the report tries to convey should be easier for every group to wrap its hands around: Nonprofits should look beyond the final donation numbers to see where they’ve gained ground and where they’ve lost. If your group has been looking only at the bottom line total donation amounts, and hasn’t examined how much of its budget is due to new and increased donations versus lapsed donors or reduced donations, now’s the time to do so. You may spot an instructive trend.

Whether at a carnival, benefit concert, or other special event, participants will probably lose or forget things. Just ask me — I left my sweater behind at the “Free for All” series of concerts on the UC Berkeley campus just last weekend. (The late summer weather was too hot to even contemplate the existence of sweaters!)

I knew perfectly well that leaving the sweater on the concert hall seat was my own fault. And yet, irrationally,  its loss made me sad enough to feel less excited about the event overall.

But wait! There’s a happy ending: The efficiency with which the event volunteers rounded up my sweater and later made it available to me were so impressive that I have to write a blog about it.

Here’s what they did, which your nonprofit may well want to emulate, in order to turn other sad faces into happy ones:

1) Assign volunteers to check the venues for lost items after each concert.

2) Have those volunteers drop off lost items at the information booth.

3) Display a big sign on the information booth saying “LOST AND FOUND” so that participants could easily find where to look.

4) For straggler items (like my sweater) that didn’t make it to the booth by day’s end, designate a location where items would be kept, and a person to call to ask about them.

Your event may not be as big as the Cal one, but if it is, you may want to take the added step that they did: Draw up a written list of all the lost and found items, so that when people like me call, saying, “Um, it’s a black sweater, I can’t remember the brand,” they can easily read down the list of descriptions instead of pawing through a pile of stuff.

Soon, I hope to be reunited with said sweater.

A recent article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “A newsmaker you should know: From fundraising parent to charity’s executive director,” offers a reminder of the way many professional nonprofit fundraisers get their start: by pitching in on a cause that they care about. In Debra Panei’s case, she had been helping raise money for her children’s school when she discovered she “really liked” fundraising.

Thank goodness this happens to some people, because I’ve never heard a child say, “I want to be a fundraiser when I grow up,” much less a parent saying, “Tommy wants to be a lawyer, but I’m really hoping he’ll go into fundraising.” Hopefully that will change someday, as the field of fundraising becomes more professionalized, and an increasing number of colleges offer courses in fundraising and other aspects of nonprofit administration.

In the meantime, people like Debra often have to learn by doing — no small task, as she is the first to admit. When she started her first fundraising position, as a development assistant at St. Barnabas Charities, she says “I found out there is a lot more to fundraising.” Now there’s an understatement!

Fortunately, there are numerous resources to help anyone learning to fundraise. And I’ve been thrilled to discover that my book, “Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits,” is being used as a textbook in numerous fundraising courses, in places like San Francisco State University,  the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the University of Kansas, the Palmer School of Library and Information Science, and the University of the Pacific.