ONLY 7 BUSINESS DAYS REMAIN IN THE 2013 COMBINED FEDERAL CAMPAIGN

With just 7 business days remaining in the 2013 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), we encourage you to make one last appeal to your past federal donors, asking them to consider making a gift. While we don't know the total amounts raised in the CFC to date, we anticipate lower donations than in the past due to the impact of the shutdown, on federal employee morale and the continued uncertainty associated with being a federal employee in the current economic and political environment.

Hopefully this will be a one-year downturn and we can continue working with OPM to improve and revitalize the CFC. In the meantime and in the very short term, an appeal from you to your CFC donors may boost your designations, and we encourage you to do that immediately.

SAMPLE EMAIL APPEAL TEMPLATES

To support you in this final CFC appeal, click here for two sample emails to send to your federal employee donors. With the campaign ending on January 15, we urge that you send the first email by COB tomorrow and the second email by next Monday, January 13. Later today, we will send you a list of your CFC donors' email addresses. These are YOUR donors, many of whom may have given already, but given less than in the past, or may, until this point, have not yet made a contribution. For members new to our federation in 2013, please use any past lists you may have of federal donors. 

It is our role as your federation to monitor the campaign throughout the season and the entire year. Once the federal government reopened on October 17, we began to notice an impact on campaign momentum and participation rates. One of the by-products of the federal government shutdown was a dramatic drop in events and internal fundraising push at federal workplaces. Many of you experienced cancelled and postponed campaign events. A good number of these events were never rescheduled and consequently, many Federal employees who may have given in the past may not have been asked to give this year. And we all know a basic tenet of fundraising is you have to ask to get.

So we strongly encourage you to reach out using the tools we are providing.

OUR CONTINUED WORK FOR A STRONG CFC

We will continue to provide you with updates as it pertains to the CFC. We continue working with the other federation partners to keep pressure on OPM related to the proposed new rules as well as to develop strategies for revitalizing this important source of unrestricted funds for you.

As a reminder, here is a summary of the information we have provided to support and empower you in your CFC participation:

1. Launched #InspiredGiving campaign to engage federal workers with our members
2. Supported our members’ participation in nearly 400 campaign events
3. Memo of October 28, 2013 that the 2013 CFC solicitation period was extended until January 15, 2014
4. Memo of October 17, 2013 in which we anticipated federal agencies would be ramping up campaign events after the federal shutdown ended.
5. Memo of October 9, 2013 with an update on the CFC and federal government shutdown.
6. Memo of October 2, 2013 with talking points related to the shutdown and potential impact.
7. Launched the Save the CFC website and submitted comments to the Federal Register on May 21, 2013 in response on proposed CFC regulation changes.

Please use the materials provided to make one last appeal to your donors as outlined in this e-mail.

We are here to help if you have questions. And please notify us when you send your appeal out by emailing us a copy along with any attachments you provide.

Please contact Robyn Neal, Director, Member and Campaign Services at RNeal@charities.org or 703.674.5349.  

Sincerely,

Steve Delfin
President & CEO, America's Charities