Year-End Sprint: Plan and Execute

The Most Strategic Time of the Year

For many nonprofits, the end of the year accounts for a significant portion of total donations. The mechanics are well known: individual donors, who benefit from a 66% tax deduction on their gifts—or 75% up to a cap for organizations aiding people in difficulty—give before December 31 to claim the benefit for the current tax year. Everything hinges on these three months, and the difference between a good year and a bad one almost always comes down to preparation. Building a sprint in advance with ChatGPT turns this calendar constraint into an advantage.

October: Prepare Everything While There’s Still Time

October isn’t a month for communication; it’s a month for production. This is when you review the past year, collect testimonials (with consent from the individuals involved) while they’re still available, prepare visuals, and segment your donor database. None of these four tasks are visible externally, yet all of them determine what happens in December. Start by establishing the overall plan, giving ChatGPT your past results and your actual resources.

Create a year-end fundraising campaign plan for
our nonprofit [cause area]. Last year's fundraising
budget: [X] €. This year's goal: [Y] €.

Available channels: email (list of [X] contacts),
Instagram ([X] followers), Facebook ([X] followers),
direct mail (donors > €200).

The plan must cover October through December with:
- Key dates and actions for each week
- The number of planned emails and their themes
- Social media content (frequency and angles)
- Tracking indicators (KPIs)

Next, move straight into batch-producing everything the campaign will consume: the full email sequence (five to seven messages), weekly social media posts, associated Canva visuals, direct mail for major donors, and phone follow-up scripts. Producing this entire set in October, while your schedule still has breathing room, saves you from drafting a donation appeal at midnight on December 23, when quality almost always collapses.

November: Prepare for Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday, which falls on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the US—December 1 in 2026—has become a standalone fundraising event. Its defining feature is compression: everything happens in twenty-four hours, and a campaign improvised the day before yields nothing. Prepare it in full during November.

Create a Giving Tuesday campaign for our nonprofit.
Our goal: raise [X] € in 24 hours.
Core message: [theme].

Produce:
1. A launch email (send at 8:00 AM)
2. 3 Instagram posts (morning, noon, evening)
3. A Facebook post with a progress tracker
4. A follow-up email (send at 6:00 PM)
5. A thank-you email (send the next day)

December: Execute Without Improvising

The main campaign relies on a sequence of five emails, each with a different angle. Request them in a single block to ensure narrative coherence from start to finish.

Write a sequence of 5 emails for our year-end
campaign (December 1–31).

Email 1 (Dec 1): Year review + campaign launch
Email 2 (Dec 10): Beneficiary testimonial + impact
Email 3 (Dec 18): Gentle urgency (13 days left)
Email 4 (Dec 26): Last chance before Dec 31
Email 5 (Jan 1): Thank you + campaign recap

Each email: subject line + full body + CTA.
Mention the 66% tax deduction in every email.

In parallel, handle last year’s donors who haven’t given again this year as a separate group. These are your best prospects, and they deserve a message that acknowledges their past support rather than a generic mass follow-up.

Write a personalized email to re-engage a donor
who gave [amount] € last year but hasn't given
this year yet. Tone: grateful, not guilt-inducing.
Recall the impact of their past gift and what we
accomplished thanks to them.

January: Tax Receipts and Review

Prepare your tax receipts in January: a late delivery irritates regular donors who need them for their tax filings. The letter accompanying the receipt is also your first communication of the new year.

Write a cover letter to accompany the 2025 tax
receipt. Thank the donor, recap the year's impact
figures, mention the deduction rate (66% for
individuals, 75% for aid to people in difficulty
up to €1,000), and announce 2026 projects.

Finally, measure your results; otherwise, you’ll make the same choices next year. Compare the total amount raised against your goal, count new donors, note your email open and click-through rates as well as social media engagement, and calculate your cost per acquired donor. Tracking these five indicators year over year will tell you which channels deserve your effort.

Your Turn

Set your backward schedule. Mark the four phases of the sprint on your calendar, including the date of Giving Tuesday. Then, in October, ask ChatGPT for the complete email sequence and December posts based on last year’s results. Verify the tax deduction rate applicable to your organization before citing it.

Official sources: Income Tax - Donations to Nonprofits and Public Interest Organizations (service-public.gouv.fr) · Projects in ChatGPT (OpenAI Help Center) · Prompting (ChatGPT Documentation)

Key Takeaways

• Prepare your sprint in October—content must be ready before launch
• Produce all content in batches within a ChatGPT project
• Giving Tuesday is a catalyst—plan it as a standalone event
• Mention the tax deduction at the verified rate in every communication
• Thank every donor immediately
• Analyze results to improve the next campaign