Most nonprofits find out how their year-end campaign went on January 2. Someone runs a report, compares the total to last year, and the team either celebrates or quietly decides to “start earlier next year.”
By then, the information is useless. You can’t send another email to a December that’s already over.
The better question is one you can answer in the second week of December: are we on pace, and if we’re not, why? That takes a simple pacing chart built from your own history and about 20 minutes a week. This article walks through how to build one, what to watch, and what to do when the numbers say you’re behind.
Why “compared to last year” misleads you in December
Year-end giving is heavily back-loaded. The M+R Benchmarks 2026 report found that in 2025, nonprofits in its study received 37% of all online revenue in December. The last week of the year brought in 10% of annual online revenue, and December 31 alone accounted for 4%.
Do the math on that. If December is 37% of the year and the last week is 10%, then roughly 27% of December’s online money arrives in its final seven days. A campaign that looks weak on December 15 may be perfectly fine. A campaign that looks fine on December 15 may be in trouble, because a flat total at that point usually means the last week will be flat too.
That’s why comparing this year’s running total to last year’s final total tells you almost nothing in the middle of the campaign. And even comparing to last year’s total on the same calendar date has problems. Dates move. GivingTuesday fell on December 2 in 2025 and falls on December 1 this year. December 31 was a Wednesday last year and is a Thursday this year. Your mail drop may have landed on a different week. A straight date-to-date comparison can make you panic over a timing difference or feel safe when you shouldn’t.
Build a pacing curve from your own history
The fix is to stop asking “how much have we raised?” and start asking “how much should we have raised by now, given how our donors usually give?”
Here’s how to build that. Export every gift from last year’s campaign window (say, November 1 through December 31) with the gift date. Sort by date and calculate a running total. Then divide each day’s running total by the final total. Now you have a curve that says, for example, “by December 10 last year, we had 40% of our final campaign revenue.”
If you have two or three years of data, build the curve for each and look at the shape. You’re not looking for precision. You’re looking for the pattern your donors follow.
Two adjustments make the curve more honest:
- Line up the big days, not just the dates. Match GivingTuesday to GivingTuesday and your appeal mail drop to your mail drop. For the last two weeks, count backward from December 31 instead of forward from December 1.
- Use gift date, not deposit date. If your checks get batched and entered in January, your curve will be wrong in both years. If your team isn’t clear on how December mail should be dated, this guide to dating December gifts correctly is worth reviewing before the campaign starts.
Now apply this year’s goal to the curve. If your goal is $110,000 and you historically have 40% of the total by December 10, you should be near $44,000 on that date.
Four numbers worth checking every week
A pacing chart with only dollars on it will tell you that you’re behind. It won’t tell you why. I’d track these four together:
Cumulative dollars against pace. This is the headline number. Divide what you’ve raised by the percentage of the curve you’ve reached and you get a rough projection for the campaign.
Gift count against last year. Dollars can hide problems. One unexpected $10,000 gift can cover up the fact that 60 regular donors haven’t given yet. Count tells you whether you’re reaching people.
Average gift. If count is on track and dollars are behind, your ask amounts or your strongest donors are the place to look. If average gift is flat and dollars are behind, it’s a count problem.
Returning year-end donors. Of the people who gave last December, how many have given again so far? Compare that to the same point last year. These are your most likely donors, and if they’re slow, you’ll feel it everywhere else.
None of these require special software. A spreadsheet updated every Monday morning is enough.
What it looks like in practice
Imagine a literacy program with a $110,000 year-end goal. Last year it raised $100,000 in the same window, so the goal assumes about 10% growth. Its pacing curve says it typically has 40% of its total by December 10.
On December 10, it has raised $38,500. Pace says it should be at $44,000. Projected forward, $38,500 at 40% of the curve points to a final total around $96,250, nearly $14,000 short of goal.
Here’s where the other numbers earn their place. Average gift is about $97, almost identical to last year. So donors aren’t giving less. But the program has 395 gifts, when last year it had 410 at this point and the goal assumed something closer to 450. And of last year’s 600 December donors, only 140 have given again so far, compared to 175 at the same point a year ago.
That’s a clear diagnosis. This isn’t a messaging problem or an ask-amount problem. Fewer of the people who usually give have shown up yet. Thirty-five missing returning donors at a $97 average is only about $3,400 by itself, but those donors also tend to give in the last week. If they don’t come back, the gap grows.
What to do when you’re behind (and what not to do)
The temptation when you’re behind is to send more of everything to everyone. More email, a bigger match, a new urgent subject line. Sometimes that helps. Often it just tires out the donors who were going to give anyway.
The diagnosis should decide the response:
- If returning donors are slow, go to them directly. Pull last year’s December donors who haven’t given yet and treat them as their own segment. A separate email that acknowledges their past gift, a short personal note from the executive director to the top of that list, or phone calls from board members to the top 25 are all reasonable. If you haven’t already, build your appeal around last December’s donors rather than treating them as part of the general list.
- If count is fine but average gift is down, look at your ask strings and at who among your larger donors hasn’t given. How you set ask amounts can matter more than another round of copy edits.
- If everything is on pace, don’t cut planned pieces to save money. Being on pace on December 10 means you’re on track to the plan, and the plan includes the last week.
What not to do: don’t drop your final-week emails to “avoid annoying people” because the early numbers look good, and don’t decide on December 26 that the campaign failed. The last week is a big share of the result. Your final days deserve their own plan, which is why it’s worth mapping out your last 72 hours of December emails ahead of time.
When pacing won’t work well
A pacing curve needs history. If this is your first real year-end campaign, or your file changed dramatically (a big acquisition push, a merger, a lost major donor), last year’s curve is a weaker guide. In that case, track count and returning donors anyway and treat the dollar projection as a rough signal, not a forecast.
Small organizations also need to watch for lumpy gifts. If one board member typically gives $15,000 on December 30, pull that gift out of the curve and track it separately. Otherwise your pace will look terrible all month and then suddenly fine, and you won’t learn anything in between.
Set it up this week
You don’t need to do all of this at once. This week, export last year’s gifts from November 1 through December 31 and build the running-total curve. Mark three checkpoints on it: the Monday after GivingTuesday, December 10, and December 20. Put those dates on your calendar now with a reminder to check the four numbers.
That’s it. You’ll still find out how the campaign went on January 2. But you’ll also have had three chances to change the ending.
If you want help planning the whole campaign, not just tracking it, my workbook Finish Strong: The 90-Day Year-End Fundraising Plan walks you through planning and running a year-end campaign from October through December on a 13-week calendar. The worksheets stack into a complete year-end plan, and there are AI prompts throughout to help you move faster.
