March 3, 2004 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Q. I’ve heard that some months are better than others for fund-raising efforts. Which ones?
A. November and December are the most wonderful time of the year for many fund raisers, for two reasons: because the holiday season inspires a wave of warm and altruistic feelings, and because many people rush to make tax-deductible contributions before December 31. “We always have best results in November and December,” says Mary Ellen Long, chief development officer at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, in Indiana. “We ask in November and the gifts roll in in December — early in the month as people are feeling philanthropic, later in the month as they want to give more for tax deductions,” she says.
Glenn McKinney, director of development at the Bowery Mission, a rehabilitation program for homeless people in New York, echoes Ms. Long’s observation that donors who give later in the season are often prodded by tax incentives, but says that that donors are also often inspired by the holiday season. “I see people respond in even greater numbers during November because of Thanksgiving,” he says. “It’s quite encouraging to see that donors are more motivated by the desire to feed hungry people than by receiving a tax break.”
The tax cycle may also help to provide an impetus to give, says Ms. Long. May is another busy season, she says, because it comes on the heels of the mid-April filing deadline: “People are more aware of what they paid and how they could have been more giving to their favorite charities instead of paying taxes.”
Then again, the summer months can be good for many charities — many groups’ fiscal years end during the summer. June is an “active month,” reports Andrew Hamingson, director of development at the Manhattan Theatre Club, a nonprofit theater group in New York. “The end of the fiscal year creates a deadline,” he says, “and we use it to create urgency with our donors.”
And don’t rule out late winter, early spring, or autumn, say charity fund raisers. For example, Royce Herron, development director at the Robey Theatre Company, a theater in Sherman Oaks, Calif., that focuses on works by black playwrights, says her group pegs a major mail appeal to prospective donors to coincide with Black History Month in February.
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a national support group that has its headquarters in Washington, promotes tribute giving around Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, says Craig P. Ziskin, the group’s deputy director of development. It focuses much of its fund-raising energies, though, in the late summer and early fall: “Back-to-school time is when we promote funding for our programs to train educators about how to create a school environment that is safe from harassment and bullying,” he says.
The bottom line is that while November and December are particularly good months because of the holidays and tax incentives, the truth is that there really aren’t inherently bad months for raising money, says Loretta Holland, owner of Prospect Consulting, in Austin, Tex., which assists its nonprofit clients with fund raising. “In grantsmanship, the work is always there if you plan well, and that’s the way you want it to be with your other fund raising,” she says. “If your fund-raising activity is spotty, then your organization’s cash flow will be, too.”
