The Case For A Nonprofit Anniversary Campaign

A note from Neon One: You’ve probably heard about celebrating the anniversary of a donor’s very first gift to your nonprofit. It’s a fantastic donor engagement tactic! But have you ever thought about celebrating the anniversary of your organization’s founding? Pauline Bartel, President and Chief Creative Officer of Bartel Communications, Inc., makes a compelling case for turning your next anniversary into a fundraising moment.

---

Here’s a cause for celebration—your organization’s anniversary! How will you celebrate? 

We recommend celebrating your organization’s longevity with a nonprofit anniversary campaign. It’s like throwing an anniversary party and getting some fabulous gifts. 

Celebrating your nonprofit’s anniversary with an anniversary campaign can help you boost revenue; build relationships with donors, volunteers, and the community; and boost morale! It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Why Run a Nonprofit Anniversary Campaign?

There are many benefits to running this kind of campaign. Here are a few!

1. Recognition of Achievements

Celebrating your anniversary allows you to herald what your organization has achieved over the years. You’ll win recognition for those accomplishments and spread awareness of your mission.

2. Stronger Key Relationships

Staff, volunteers, donors, the community, and others have made your success possible. An anniversary is a perfect occasion to acknowledge those contributions. You’ll stimulate a sense of pride in your supporters for what they’ve helped you achieve and reinforce their roles as organizational advocates.

3. Opportunities to Share Your Future Vision

Launching a nonprofit anniversary campaign allows you to look toward the years ahead. You’ll share your organization’s vision with key stakeholders and set the agenda for future achievements.

This can help build faith in your organization’s ability to achieve your mission, but make sure you have a well-thought-out strategy behind the vision and how you choose to share it with your constituency.

4 Tips for Running a Nonprofit Anniversary Campaign

Are you convinced? Here are some steps you can take as you plan and launch your anniversary campaign.

1. Be Strategic

Whether you’re marking a milestone anniversary—one ending in 0 or 5—or an in-between year, be strategic in harnessing your business anniversary’s promotional power. That means using the anniversary to showcase your organization’s offerings. You do this by:

• Creating an anniversary-year branding message
• Developing a business anniversary strategic plan with goals and metrics
• Launching integrated marketing and public relations strategies that engage stakeholders and drive revenue

2. Brand the Anniversary

Wedding anniversaries are often celebrated according to a traditional list of anniversary symbols. Did you know that a similar branding system exists for business anniversaries?

Your nonprofit may not have the time or resources to do an anniversary celebration each year, and that’s okay. It may make more sense to just celebrate your bigger milestone years. 

3. Develop Your Plan

You can celebrate your organization’s business anniversary on a single day or all year. Launching a 12-month promotional campaign allows you to maximize the anniversary’s promotional power. You can even build your nonprofit anniversary campaign like an annual giving campaign.

Developing a strategic business anniversary promotional campaign takes time and thought. Devote at least three months to planning a single-day celebration and at least nine months to planning a year-long celebration. Waiting too long squanders the promotional opportunities the anniversary offers. Make it great! Don’t procrastinate.

4. Launch Your Tactics

Launch a range of tactics to transform business anniversary merry-making into business anniversary fundraising, including:

• Outreach campaigns to supporters that increase revenue
• Appreciation campaigns for stakeholders that build stronger relationships
• Publicity campaigns that tell the organization’s story and generate free print and broadcast publicity
• Custom content such as blog posts, case statements, and special reports that inform, educate, and advance your mission
• Social media campaigns that connect to and deepen relationships with stakeholders
• Legacy campaigns that celebrate your organization’s history and become part of the organization’s brand moving into the future

Get Inspired by This Great Nonprofit Anniversary Campaign

Community Loan Fund of the Capital Region in Upstate New York connects “socially concerned individuals and institutions to build a healthier local economy and community by making low-cost, flexible loans to social and micro-entrepreneurs.” For its 30th anniversary, the organization wished to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, attract new investors and donors, and spread awareness of its programs and services.

They created the anniversary-year branding message “Celebrating 30 Years of Strengthening Communities, Changing Lives” and launched a year-long promotional campaign. Tactics included:

• Identifying Community Loan Fund success stories in each of its three decades, choosing 12 and highlighting them in a wall calendar that was sent to key stakeholders
• Creating a case statement that shared the Community Loan Fund’s history, achievements, and future vision for use in attracting major investors and donors
• Hosting a 30th-anniversary gala celebration to honor key stakeholders, celebrate past accomplishments, and share the organization’s future vision

The business anniversary campaign’s integrated marketing, public relations, and media relations efforts yielded big results for the Community Loan Fund. 

Their results:

• A $30,000 check from a new, small-business owner/investor
• A $1.75 million grant from the U.S. Treasury, most of which was earmarked for a three-year lending capital campaign with the goal of raising $6 million
• Digital media coverage of the Treasury grant and the Community Loan Fund’s programs and services in the Albany area’s only business weekly, resulting in more than 20,000 positive media impressions

Anniversaries are Opportunities for Your Nonprofit

Whether your organization is approaching its 10th, 25th, or 150th business anniversary, don’t miss the opportunities that a business anniversary celebration offers: Recognition of your achievements, stronger key relationships, and the ability to share your future vision. 

As you leverage your nonprofit’s business anniversary, make sure you have a strategic plan to follow up and build on those opportunities all year long. A good donor database will help you make the most of your donor data and hone your overall strategy.

Neon CRM is a comprehensive donor management system with a full suite of tools to help your nonprofit grow. If you’d like to learn more about Neon CRM’s features and capabilities, join us for one of our regularly scheduled 30-minute group demo sessions. Sign up below!

Sign Up for a Neon CRM Group Demo