Business

When is Nonprofit Fundraising Season? Some Important Pointers for Nonprofits

Published

7 years ago

September 3, 2019

Matthew Wiles

Most nonprofits want to know the answer to this question:

When is the best time of year for fundraising?

Several studies claim that there is a certain time frame where donations spike due to the spirit of giving and tax benefits. Can you guess which time of year we are talking about?

According to experts, around 30% of donations happen between Giving Tuesday (December 3rd)—the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving—and December 31st.

In this article, we will answer these questions:

What is fundraising season?
Why is the nonprofit fundraising season at the end of the year?
When should I start preparing for the upcoming fundraising season?
What should I do to prepare?

Read on to learn more about the upcoming nonprofit fundraising season and how to prepare for it!

What is fundraising season?

It’s the time of year where nonprofits hustle to reach out to donors by launching creative campaigns in hopes of drawing in more donations.

For most nonprofits, fundraising season begins after Labor Day (September 3rd) and continues until the snowy depths of December. However, research reveals that donations tend to spike between Giving Tuesday and New Year’s Eve.

Why is the nonprofit fundraising season at the end of the year?

Interestingly, the giving season parallels the time of year where consumerism skyrockets, but there’s a reason behind the increase in donations at the end of the year.

Some experts note that the spirit of giving goes hand-in-hand with personal consumerism. How? The holidays represent a time of giving and taking—you receive gifts, and you give gifts.

Therefore, some people who’ve purchased or invested in a lot of personal items may garner a greater desire to give to nonprofits or charities! It’s the time of giving, after all.

Others state that it’s the time of year where people write checks to charities or nonprofits for tax benefit purposes.

With this in mind, it’s vital to develop a creative fundraising strategy before the nonprofit fundraising season begins.

When should you start preparing for the upcoming fundraising season?

It’s important to start preparing your campaign while backyard BBQs, sunscreen, and summertime heat fill the air (or before, if you can).

A comprehensive plan can help you to gain more funds, attract donors, and draw attention to the story of your fundraiser. Sometimes a well-thought-out plan can take a while to prepare, so if you want to stand out, it’s essential to develop a fundraising strategy in advance.

What should you do to prepare?

When you’re developing a campaign for your end-of-year fundraiser, it’s important to pay attention to these factors when formulating your strategy:

1. Establish your goals

While you develop your strategy, it’s essential to figure out your goals. Why?

Having a goal will help you to understand which donors to target and which fundraising strategies to use.

Do you have a set amount of money you’d like to raise by a certain date? Or would you prefer to find donors willing to pay a monthly fee? Which donors would you like to target? How will you communicate with your donors?

For example, you may feel like you want to target donors who will attend a Casino Night where you raise $10,000. After you confirm this is your goal, you will understand which donors to target, which leads us to the next point…

2. Research your donor base

It’s important to segment your donors, which can help you to distinguish who is most likely to donate to your fundraiser and who won’t.

For example, someone may have sent a major donation recently, so if you send them an email asking for a lot of money, they may refuse. Therefore, it’s vital to segment your donor base, so you can see which type of email to send to each group.

Segmenting can also help you to determine which donors will respond to your Casino Night fundraiser—you can create an alternate strategy for the donors who have no desire to attend a Casino Night.

You can use the RFM strategy to segment your donor base—recency, frequency, and monetary—which enables you to find out when the donor last gave, how often they give, and how much money they’ve donated.

Once you’ve researched your donor base, you can focus on how to communicate with them.

3. Figure out how to communicate with your donors

Which form of communication do your donors respond to?

How will you ensure that your most reliable donors know of your campaign? Will you write a newsletter, compose personal and direct emails, or send the information via snail mail? Will you call your donors?

Once you’ve segmented your base, it will be easy to tell which form of communication certain donors prefer.

How can you find out this information? You can look through communication records. Seek out how they responded to direct emails, newsletters, snail mail, or phone calls in the past.

4. Tell a story

What story are you trying to tell? Will it attract donations?

People want to know who they will be helping. They want to know that their donations can help to change a life. Plus, most people feel that everyone deserves happiness at the end of the year, so they want to give to fundraisers where their donation will make a difference.

Involve your donors in the narratives of the people your nonprofit supports.

Once you’ve pinpointed the story you want to tell, you can move on to creating an online strategy.

5. Develop an intriguing online strategy

It’s so important to create User Generated Content (UGC) when creating your online marketing strategy—and in general. If you want to learn more about UGC for nonprofits, follow this link for more information.

When you develop an online strategy, it’s vital to think of a way to make your story stand out. But keep in mind that, in general, followers don’t like spammy posts.

For example, people enjoyed the Ice Bucket Challenge, which was fun, involved the public, and raised awareness.

It helps to think of creative ideas that talk about your fundraiser online in a way that’s intriguing but not overwhelming.

In conclusion

It can be tough for fundraisers to understand when to launch their campaign.

Some may believe that it doesn’t matter when they unravel their campaign to the public, but if nonprofits want to experience a successful fundraiser, it’s important to plan it for a time when people want to give.

For example, February can be stressful for numerous reasons (middle of winter, new responsibilities), so giving won’t be at the forefront of minds. However, during the holiday season, people want to give—the tax benefits may also propel donations to spike around this time of year.

It’s essential to prepare for the upcoming nonprofit fundraising season! What are you doing to prepare?

Business

How Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity

Published

2 weeks ago

April 29, 2026

Matthew Wiles

How technology drives value creation in private equity is now one of the most actively debated topics among institutional investors and fund managers. A decade ago, technology was largely a cost center in PE-backed companies. Today it sits at the center of margin improvement, revenue growth, and exit multiple expansion. Firms that figured this out early are generating better returns with less reliance on financial engineering.

The shift happened for a practical reason. As interest rates rose and deal multiples compressed, financial leverage stopped doing the heavy lifting. Operational improvement became the primary value creation lever. Technology accelerated what was possible within the ownership period.

How Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity Operations

Operational improvement through technology produces the most measurable results. PE firms apply technology tools to reduce costs, increase throughput, and improve decision-making speed inside their companies.

Digital Process Automation in PE-Backed Companies

Manual processes in back-office and production functions carry real costs. They consume labor, generate errors, and slow down the information flow that management teams depend on. Automation tools eliminate these costs without requiring headcount reductions that disrupt company culture.

The most impactful automation deployments in PE-backed operations include:

Accounts payable and receivable automation that compresses billing cycles and reduces days sales outstanding
Production scheduling software that reduces downtime and improves throughput in manufacturing environments
Inventory management systems that cut carrying costs by aligning purchasing with real-time demand signals
Quality control automation that reduces defect rates and warranty claims in product-based businesses

ZCG Consulting (“ZCGC”) works with companies across industrials, manufacturing, packaging, and consumer products to identify and implement automation programs tied to specific financial outcomes. The approach connects technology investment to measurable margin improvement rather than treating automation as a general upgrade.

Data Infrastructure as a Value Creation Tool

Many PE-backed companies arrive under new ownership with fragmented data systems. Different departments use different tools. Reporting requires manual consolidation. Leadership makes decisions with incomplete information.

Fixing that infrastructure creates immediate value. Integrated data systems give management teams real-time visibility into revenue, cost, and operational performance. That visibility accelerates decisions and surfaces problems before they become material.

James Zenni, founder and CEO of ZCG with over 30 years of capital markets experience, has consistently emphasized that information quality drives investment performance. That view shapes how ZCG approaches technology investment across the companies in its portfolio.

Technology Drives Value Creation in Private Equity Through Revenue Growth

Cost reduction gets most of the attention in PE operational improvement, but technology also drives revenue growth. The mechanisms are different, and they compound differently over a hold period.

E-Commerce and Digital Customer Acquisition

Companies that sell primarily through traditional channels often leave significant revenue on the table. Adding e-commerce capabilities or investing in digital customer acquisition expands the addressable market without proportional cost increases.

PE firms that invest in digital revenue channels generate higher growth rates during the hold period. That growth rate difference translates directly into exit multiple expansion.

Revenue growth technology applications in PE-backed companies include:

E-commerce platform buildouts that open direct-to-consumer channels alongside existing wholesale relationships
Customer relationship management systems that improve retention and increase repeat purchase rates
Digital marketing infrastructure that lowers customer acquisition costs through better targeting and attribution
Pricing optimization tools that identify margin improvement opportunities without volume loss

Technology-Enabled Customer Experience Improvements

Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition. Technology investments in customer experience, service speed, and product quality consistency reduce churn. Lower churn produces more predictable revenue. More predictable revenue supports higher exit valuations.

ZCG deploys Haptiq Technologies and Solutions, its 300-plus-person technology division, to support digital transformation across its companies. The platform was founded 20 years ago and manages approximately $8 billion in AUM. It brings implementation resources that most individual companies cannot afford to build internally. That capability gives ZCG’s companies faster access to technology improvements at lower execution risk.

Building Technology Capability Within PE-Backed Companies

Technology investment during the hold period creates value in two ways. It improves financial performance during ownership. It also makes the business more attractive to the next buyer.

Strategic buyers and later-stage PE funds pay premium multiples for companies with modern technology infrastructure. A business with integrated systems, clean data, and digital revenue channels commands a better price. A comparable business running on legacy platforms does not.

The ZCG Team structures technology investment as part of the initial value creation plan for each company. Priorities get set at entry based on the gap between current capability and acquirer expectations.

This pre-sale positioning approach changes how technology investment gets funded and sequenced during the hold period. Projects that improve financial performance and exit readiness simultaneously get prioritized. Projects with long payback periods that do not improve the sale narrative get deferred.

How technology drives value creation in private equity is ultimately about execution discipline. The tools matter less than the clarity of the financial objective each technology investment must achieve.