Plan three or four short appeals before December 31 and a thank-you in January. Write separately to past donors and newsletter readers, give each email one ask, and email an official receipt the moment someone gives.

The last five weeks of the giving year

By late November, the office of a small non-profit is already thinking about December. Its newsletter has gone out all year; the last emails of the year carry a different request.

For a registered charity, gifts received by December 31 are receipted for this tax year, and many donors give in the final weeks for that reason. Some give on the last afternoon of the year.

For many charities those five weeks matter more than any other stretch of the email calendar, and they are easy to get wrong: too many messages, too many asks, or a receipt that takes weeks.

How many emails, and when

A short series serves readers better than one long appeal or a daily stream of reminders. For most small organisations, this is plenty:

Leave Christmas Day and Boxing Day alone. And take each new donor off the remaining appeals: someone who gave on December 3 and is asked again on December 30 assumes the gift went unnoticed.

Past donors and newsletter readers

The list holds two kinds of reader. Past donors know the organisation and have already decided it deserves money; newsletter readers like its work but may never have given.

Write to them separately. Donors hear thanks for last year's gift and what it did, then an invitation to give again.

Readers who have never given need a sentence on what the organisation does, a concrete example of what a gift buys, and an easy first gift. Asking them to renew support they never gave reads as careless.

One ask in each message

Year-end emails often try to do everything: give, volunteer, buy tickets for the spring event, follow us on Facebook. Each extra request draws attention from the one that matters this month.

Give each email one ask and one link, shown as a button high in the email and repeated at the foot. The suggested amounts in the email should match those on the donation page.

The donation page behind the button

The email depends entirely on the page it sends people to. On a phone, that page should load quickly, ask only for what a receipt needs, and take card details on a secure page.

Show the charity's registration number, offer a monthly gift beside the one-time gift, and say plainly that the receipt arrives by email.

Make a real gift through it before the first appeal goes out. Otherwise the first person to find a broken form in December is a donor.

A receipt that arrives at once

A donor who gives at eleven at night on December 31 wants proof, not a promise of paper in February. An official receipt emailed the moment the gift goes through gives them that.

If the donation system cannot issue official receipts itself, send an immediate acknowledgement that says when the receipt will follow, and keep to that date.

What an official receipt must show is set out on the Canada Revenue Agency's website, and the charity's accountant can confirm the wording. This is general information, not tax advice for your organisation.

Who it comes from

Send the appeals from a person, with the organisation's name beside theirs, such as the executive director or the board chair writing in their own words.

Subject lines can stay plain. On December 30 the deadline itself is reason enough, and a dramatic subject looks like every other appeal in the inbox.

A worked example

An adult literacy society in a Vancouver Island city matches volunteer tutors with adults who want to read and write with more confidence, and runs evening groups from a storefront office.

Last year it sent one long email on December 15 to its whole list, asking readers to give, volunteer, buy tickets for a spring fundraiser and follow it online.

Receipts were printed and mailed by the bookkeeper in February. One donor phoned in January to ask whether her gift had arrived; another gave twice by mistake.

This year the list is split into donors and newsletter readers, with three short appeals before the deadline and a January thank-you, each with a single button to the donation page.

Donors drop off the remaining appeals as soon as they give, and the donation form emails an official receipt at once, from an address the office reads.

Each reader now gets a message written for what they already know, and every donor has proof of the gift before closing the browser.

The thank-you in January

The thank-you matters as much as the ask. A donor who hears nothing after December has no evidence the gift mattered, and next year's appeal arrives as the next contact.

Send it in the first two weeks of January to everyone who gave. Say what the year's gifts will pay for in concrete terms, from a named program to a number of tutoring hours.

Leave the ask out. A thank-you with a donate button at the bottom reads as the first appeal of the new year.

The counter-case

A very small organisation whose few dozen donors know the board personally may do better with handwritten notes or phone calls than an email series.

And an organisation that is not a registered charity cannot issue official donation receipts, so the December 31 deadline gives its readers no reason to hurry. Its appeal should leave receipts out entirely.

Both still gain from the rest of this advice: one clear ask, a donation page tested on a phone, an immediate acknowledgement and a thank-you in January.

Between now and December 31

  1. Split the list into donors and newsletter readers.
  2. Plan the appeals and the January thank-you on a calendar.
  3. Give each email one ask and one link.
  4. Test the donation page with a real gift on a phone.
  5. Send the receipt or an acknowledgement automatically, at once.
  6. Remove new donors from the remaining appeals.
  7. Write the January thank-you before Christmas.

Step seven is the step that slips. January is busy, the thank-you drifts into February, and donors who gave in December next hear from the organisation when it needs money again.

If one of these emails goes out with a broken donation link, fixing the page first and deciding whether a correction is worth sending is covered in the correction email after a newsletter mistake.

Frequently asked questions

Why do charities email so much in December?

Gifts to a registered charity received by December 31 are receipted for that tax year, so many donors give in the last weeks of the year.

How many year-end emails should we send?

Three or four short appeals between early December and New Year's Eve, then a thank-you in January. Stop sending appeals to anyone who has already given.

Should past donors get the same email as newsletter readers?

No. Thank past donors for last year's gift and say what it did. Tell readers who have never given what the organisation does and what one gift buys.

When should the tax receipt arrive?

At once, by email, the moment the gift goes through. If the system cannot issue official receipts, send an immediate acknowledgement saying when the receipt will follow.

Should the thank-you email ask for another gift?

No. A thank-you with a donate button reads as the first appeal of the new year. Say what the gifts will pay for, and nothing more.

Can any non-profit issue tax receipts?

No. Only registered charities and certain other qualified donees can issue official donation receipts. An organisation that cannot should leave receipts out of its appeal entirely.

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