ISGM End of Year Concept

Lynn Swain

Still pretty sketchy, but we have leads on some good copy, images, and a source for giving levels....

Rachael Ahrens

Terrific! Danielle and I will comment back very shortly. Thanks much!

Rachael Ahrens

I'm liking this campaign so far. You have lots of good ideas.

It can be tricky to come up with a catchy, meaningful elevator pitch. Looking at your website, I felt that using words that convey "learning outside the box" would be a good way to describe your school partnership program. Phrases like "Art as a Classroom," "Inspiration in Education," and "Using the museum as a classroom" came to mind. Another thing to try would be to open up the brainstorm to your whole staff. Surely being surrounded by beautiful art all day keeps your staffs' creative juices in high gear. Send out a staff email asking for help coming up with a clever tagline for your EOY campaign. This could be fun for your staff and you might get a brilliant submission. Offer lunch to the person who comes up with the winning idea.

Many of your readers may not even know that you have a school partnership program so be sure to give a quick description of the program including your plans for the new classroom building. You want your donors to have a bit of background. I'm guessing many of your constituents are museum patrons, some who don't have a child in school, so they may not know of such a program but would be thrilled to get involved. Essentially, you're bring the magic of the museum to young people who might not otherwise be exposed. Explain that so your donors know why this program is important to the museum.Then, add the personal story from the teacher to give the program a human face.

When you're selecting your levels, keep in mind that online gifts, especially during the holiday season, tend to start up around the $30 mark. Start your giving levels around there and give a nice range at least up to $500 (or more depending on your organization's own average online gift amount).

You will absolutely want to secure some homepage real estate to promote your campaign during the entire month of December. Remember that many people receive your email or your direct mail piece and go directly to your homepage (instead of where you specifically ask them to go which is the donation form). You want to make sure there is a clear button that leads to where they want to go. It should be the most noticeable thing on your homepage during December so that your donors don't get distracted. Also, promote on your social media sites all throughout the month as well. Each time you send an email, post the message viewer link to Facebook so that even those FB fans who aren't members of your list can read your messages.

Great work and good luck finalizing your plans!

Danielle Johnson

Great messages and overall concept.

For the gift of membership campaign in November, if you plan on soliciting people that give to the membership campaign, again in December, you might include a short TY message acknowledging the fact that they may have already given and you hope they'll consider a year end donation. This message would probably be towards the end of the email, maybe even the PS or in the side bar.

In addition to providing a brief description about the school program in the email, you could go into the autoresponder for the campaign donation form and add a link with more info about the program and how people can get involved. Don't link to the program in the email because you don't want to drive people away from the email appeal or donation form.