How One Fundraising Director Turns Post-Event Momentum Into Year-Round Donor Loyalty

For charity leaders who took part in Coldest Night of the Year in February, walking in the cold and gathering afterward for a simple meal, it can be a quietly powerful experience.

But once the adrenaline fades and post-event fatigue sets in, the question becomes: how do you keep participants and donors just as engaged as they were while crossing the finish line together?

We caught up with Kyla Arsenault, Director of Fundraising and Public Relations at Ray of Hope and former National Director of Events at Blue Sea, to break down how to maximize this delicate post-event window.

Here are Kyla’s key takeaways for sustaining that momentum, all rooted in the same core principles: identity, stewardship, and trust.

Treat Team Captains Like Major Donors

Team captains are the most underestimated asset in peer-to-peer fundraising. Their impact is on average 5X more than anyone else. They raise more, give more, and recruit more. So, for Ray of Hope, their recognition doesn’t stop when the event ends. 

“Anyone raising $5,000 or more as a team captain or $1,000 or more as an individual hears from us directly,” says Kyla. “They get personal tours of our centre and receive communications specific to them.”

This year during CNOY, for example, they had a brand new fundraiser (an existing Ray of Hope donor who hadn’t before participated in the walk) who suddenly started climbing the scoreboard. Kyla immediately invited him for a tour of their centre so he could see first-hand his dollars in action. “He was surprised he even made it on our radar,” she says. The impact of that personal connection is massive. “Trust is contagious. Him telling the 150 people or so he knows about us has far stronger an impact than a bus ad downtown.”

Anchor People to Your Cause, Not Your Event

You hear it from us at Blue Sea all the time: the event is a celebration of the fundraising, not the other way around.

“If we had freezing rain on the day of the fundraising event and had to cancel, we’d still be fine,” Kyla says. In a similar way, during COVID, with no physical walk for a few years, CNOY still saw some of its strongest fundraising numbers at the time, because the community strongly identified with the cause, not just the activity.

This distinction shapes every post-event communication. “We don’t thank people for walking for us. We thank them for fundraising for us.” This small shift in identity moves the supporter from “event participant” to “change maker” so they feel connected to the cause long after the event ends.

Give Your Walkers Permission to Speak

Once a supporter feels connected to your cause, they become your most effective advocate for building awareness. Because they actually care about the work, talking about it becomes a natural extension of their support. 

“We share with our fundraisers the value of them telling all of their contacts about us and how meaningful that is to us,” says Kyla. “Their friends and family trust them, and if they trust them, they trust us through them.”

This chain of credibility is what transforms a one-time donor into a long-term supporter — something no ad budget could ever replicate.

With the strategic foundation set, execution is everything. Here are three tactical steps for a high-impact post-event plan.

Send a Personalized Impact Email

In the weeks following the fundraising event, send a personalized email that brings participants back into the experience. Highlight the final scoreboard and invite them to share event photos to keep the celebration alive. Kyla recommends keeping the copy brief and visceral to what they felt that day. For example:

“You had a chance to walk in the cold, stand in the same food line our guests use every day. That’s what it looks like year-round, except instead of walkers, it’s people experiencing poverty and homelessness.”

Design Something Fridge-Worthy

A few months later, send a physical impact card to participants who hit their fundraising minimum. Personalize it with the exact amount they raised and the real-world results: meals funded, people housed, or nights sheltered. And make it something worth keeping. Intentionally fridge-worthy.

Ray of Hope sends a beautifully designed personalized postcard as a deliberate moment of surprise and delight that a follow-up email simply can’t replicate. 

Don’t Blast: Segment Your Donor Data

Post-event, it’s tempting to roll all your donor opt-ins into a general newsletter list. Resist that urge, says Kyla. Nobody wants to feel spammed.

Instead, segment your contacts: keep existing supporters in one bucket and new event donors in another, and communicate with each accordingly.

When it comes to email, precision is what earns the open. Your subject lines should reflect that specificity: not a generic “Thank you for your donation,” but something targeted like, “The Impact of Your Coldest Night Donation.” 

At Ray of Hope, this follow-up email (sent about four months post-CNOY) includes their Annual Report and zero donation ask. By letting the impact speak for itself, they achieved a record 87% open rate.

“Fundraising is about dopamine,” Kyla says. “It’s about people feeling good about giving and knowing that it mattered. That they made a real difference.”

Do that well enough, she says, and when next year rolls around, they’ll come back wanting to feel that same feeling all over again.

Ray of Hope, a Kitchener-based charity that provides food, shelter, and support services to people facing poverty and homelessness, is a founding partner of Coldest Night of the Year. Over the past 16 years, the organization has raised more than $2.85 million dollars through the annual fundraising walk.