The Most Important Things To Do Before Year-End

We surveyed our customer support and professional services teams for their year-end preparation advice. Their best tips have been combined into a Top 10 list. Well, really it’s a Top 12 list – you get two more as a bonus!

1) Prepare to send out consolidated tax receipts (for your donors that don’t get one per gift)

2) Set up new Funds/Appeals/Packages/Events in your RE records

3) Prepare annual statements/letters for tax purposes

4) Prep for last minute year-end appeal segmenting using SegmentOmatic or The Raiser’s Edge

5) Run audits on incomplete address information if you are running any mailings (or NCOA/Address Accelerator/etc)

6)Run giving report(s) to see where your organization compares to yearly goal(s)

7) Set up reports to track year-over-year annual fund contributions to see where you stand on a daily/weekly basis compared to the following year, share as a dashboard to all stakeholders.

8) Prepare for a successful January by setting up all reporting for 2014 contributions for C/F/A/Ps, setting up 2014 contribution total statements (if you send them), creating new 2015 C/F/A/Ps in RE, and revamping standard “thank you” letters for 2015

9) Update email addresses to ensure you can send “there’s still time to make your gift’ emails through December 31st

10) Create or update your New Individual Default Set to ensure that new donor records include all of the information that’s important for your organization

11) Ensure your acknowledgement letters are ready – and think about special acknowledgement letters for those donors who have already given this year and make an additional year-end gift

12) Make sure your online donation forms are ready for New Year’s Eve