There are many of us running small nonprofits who certainly know of Giving Tuesday but are skeptical of launching a Giving Tuesday campaign. In this post, my goal is to (1) define the initiative and its origins; (2),outline reasons to consider putting together a Giving Tuesday campaign and (3) offer some practical ways of implementing one quickly, i.e., in about a week.
How much work am I talking about? Once you decide on your on fundraising project, you will need to create 1 new page on your website, 4 email messages, and 11 social media posts to use over a seven-day period beginning the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Below, I outline how to create them and even provide examples of what to say. So don’t be intimidated. Follow along and use these tips to put your campaign together today!
1. What is giving tuesday?
Giving Tuesday was created by the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 2012 and focused initially on answering a series of open questions:
Could social media be used to spread generosity and make giving go viral? Could it change cultural norms and behaviors around giving? Would people want to post about the issues they cared about as much as how many miles they ran that morning or what they ordered for lunch? (The #GivingTuesday Model).
It aims to bring together nonprofits, businesses and individuals across the world to raise awareness and funds and happens on the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving. While there are many organizations now holding non-virtual events on Giving Tuesday, it’s important to remember its social media roots. Those roots are what make it a great fundraising tool for small organizations.
2. why should you consider a giving tuesday campaign?
The biggest reason to consider a campaign this year is that Giving Tuesday is a movement designed to draw attention to the challenges we all seek to remedy every day in contrast to the commercialism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday 2017 saw a 69% increase in donations, growing from $177 million to an impressive $300 million raised. The average donor gift was $120. (Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices). Giving Tuesday's 2018 Insight report notes that more donations come in on Giving Tuesday than on any other day of the year. (GivingTuesday Insight Report 2018).
What is behind the trend? It’s hard to say exactly. 31% of all annual giving takes place in December, with 50% of nonprofits receiving the majority of their yearly donations in the final three months of the year. (The Ultimate Guide). Many have speculated that this has much to do with the altruistic spirit that the holiday season engenders. (Top 10 #GivingTuesday Best Practices). Perhaps after all the commercialism associated with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, people are increasingly willing to think about spending the money they saved on a cause in need.
It’s also true that more and more nonprofits are developing campaigns attached to the #GivingTuesday hashtag, increasing the visibility of the day and making it easy for people who want to give to find participating charities that align with their interests. For these reasons, as one commentator has noted, “ there’s a high chance you’ll get back what you put into this event, and then some!” (The Ultimate Guide). It’s also clear, however, that many more nonprofits need to jump on the bandwagon if we are to compete with the commercial messages that pervade the holiday season. In this sense, the nonprofit community itself needs to adopt an altruistic spirit and participate because each new voice will help to compete with the existing corporate commercial din.
Paid marketing channels are making it easier for nonprofits of any size to participate without putting a lot of skin in the game:
Facebook disrupted #GivingTuesday in 2017 by processing $45 million in donations and, the following day, announcing that it was permanently waiving any fees on donations and setting up an annual matching fund. Other major tech platforms have pursued or will soon enter the online giving game. The implications of this—and of direct person-to-person giving, workplace giving, recurring monthly giving, and soaring online and mobile giving, not to mention the overall effects of social media itself—are far from clear yet. But they are happening, and while we may parse the negatives and positives, we must be agile enough to use available tools to our benefit. (The #GivingTuesday Model).
A final reason for a small nonprofit to put a toe in the water of Giving Tuesday is that it’s really made for grassroots nonprofits and their creative leaders:
#GivingTuesday creator Henry Timms is coauthor of the 2018 bestseller New Power, a body of thinking about new and emerging leaders that was informed by #GivingTuesday’s growth. Such leaders, he writes, will be able to harness the passions of grassroots communities and to “structure for participation”—that is, to build organizations, movements, and initiatives that are designed to be shaped by the many. This means being a leader who not only creates many other leaders but also cultivates and supports inclusive, generative networks of them. (The #GivingTuesday Model).
3. how do you implement a giving tuesday campaign?
Ideally, you don’t have to do much homework in developing the goals and objectives for your Giving Tuesday campaign because Giving Tuesday is already mentioned in your marketing and fundraising plans. For a small nonprofit, a typical goal in these plans is new donor or member acquisition. A related objective typically includes converting engagers who haven’t yet contributed to donors. These include email list members whom you can see have opened your emails or people who follow you on social media and like your pages and/or content. In one fell swoop, you’ve identified your goal, objective and audience. The question remains, what will be your strategy to convert these list members and social media engagers to donors and that is the jumping-off point for how to create a Giving Tuesday campaign
A. giving tuesday campaign strategies
One commentator has noted that:
#GivingTuesday is an opportunity to change the country’s (and the world’s) perception of giving. It proves that philanthropy is about everyday people coming together to inspire positive change. Yet, without a strategy, an organized effort to make this change is impossible. (Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices).
Recall from our discussion of marketing plans that strategies help to explain what you will do to achieve your objectives. Each strategy involves a particular audience to whom well-crafted messages are targeted using the most appropriate media and marketing channels. What are the messages, media and marketing channels that you will use for your Giving Tuesday campaign? What will you do to convert these “engagers” into donors?
At least one commentator suggests that you are going to need a heartbreaking problem that their donation will fix. (Haydon, J. A Kiss Plan for Small Nonprofits). Why? Most donors are often more interested in giving for impact as opposed to just giving. (Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices). They are more likely to jump off of their fence and give if you ask them to support a project, program or needed equipment, something tangible that will allow them see exactly where there funds are going. (Weiner, G. 31+ #GivingTuesday Ideas). Here are two examples:
1. World Bicycle Relief:
World Bicycle Relief’s 2017 campaign had a goal of providing 1400 bikes for people living in rural areas in Africa to increase the mobility of the communities. They included donation tiers on their landing page showing donors that a donation of $150 would purchase one bicycle.
As one commentator has noted:
[t]he combination of an impact goal as well as a fundraising goal helped their campaign gain traction throughout their supporter communities, in part because they knew exactly what their funds were accomplishing, but also because the organization made frequent updates on their progress throughout the day on social media, ultimately building momentum for the campaign. (Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices).
The campaign exceeded its goal, providing 1617 bicycles to rural African communities. (Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices).
2. Chairs for Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
Here the campaign was for 250 new chairs costing $400 each for the dining room of a convent. The fundraiser for this project discusses the campaign in this way:
I’m certain we had some people give far more than they would traditionally give because they knew exactly what their money was being used for. We were able to demonstrate that it would be a significant undertaking in terms of the costs of the project – knowing that we needed to buy 250 chairs, knowing that we needed chairs at $400 each, we were looking at raising a lot of money for this project to happen. So people did stretch, they gave more than they would traditionally give because we were able to deliver that story and the payout of: you’re going to provide a safe dining room chair for a sister to replace current ones that are 20 years old and just aren’t safe.
Using a flexible technology solution, we were also able to make a custom donation page just for this one day that allowed us to match amounts to outcomes: $400 buys one chair. (Schroeder, A. Creating a Giving Tuesday Strategy).
Here, too, the combination of financial and impact goals resulted in a campaign that exceeded expectations.
b. giving tuesday campaign messaging
We have previously discussed basic rules for messaging that include being clear, concise and contextual. Here is a message related to the chairs for sisters campaign, discussed above, illustrating these points:
After 20 years of use, many chairs in the Caritas Dining Room at Mount Carmel are beyond repair and unsafe for our Sisters. With your help, we can purchase new chairs featuring durable frames, longer arms for ease in getting in and out of them, shorter backs to keep them from tipping, and chair feet that will slide easily.
Your gift on #GivingTuesday will help defray the cost of 250 chairs that will be “JUST RIGHT” for our Sisters providing safety, support, and comfort. (Schroeder, A. Creating a Giving Tuesday Strategy).
Visual content is essential and here are a few best practices related to images and video:
1. Images: Use imagery that evokes emotion and connects donors to a specific problem they can solve. Show one person (or a small number) and describe how a donation helped or might help them. Use images to tell stories that will resonate with readers and help them visualize your mission and connect with your work. (Ragusa, M. How to Use Powerful Images).
2. Video: Video is arguably harder for a small nonprofit, but in this day of super-charged cell phones, it is possible to take a quality video clip and to share that clip with others. And it’s important to consider using video given the engagement it can cause. One source reports that 57% of people who watch nonprofit YouTube videos go on to make a donation:
… [T]hey don’t have to be film festival-worthy masterpieces …. The most successful nonprofit videos I’ve seen have featured real-life stories from past campaigns or people who were positively impacted by their previous Giving Tuesday campaigns. There’s no sophisticated equipment required—showing the impact of their work was the most important part. (Wild Apricot Blog. 7 Giving Tuesday Ideas).
I use video from time to time in donor communications and, if you are interested in reasonably priced editing software that is relatively easy to learn, I highly recommend Camtasia. See my Resources page for more information.
Finally, it is important to use the Giving Tuesday hashtag in all messaging and on your landing page:
You really can’t overuse it, so make sure you include the #GivingTuesday hashtag and associate it with your campaign link in every social post, in email, on your web page, in the media, wherever. The more ownership you take of the #GivingTuesday hashtag, the more successful your campaign will be. (Eight #GivingTuesday Best Practices).
C. giving tuesday campaign marketing materials
It is my opinion that a successful Giving Tuesday campaign for a small nonprofit involves using email and social media to drive traffic to a special, Giving Tuesday page on your website (also known as a “landing page”), where people learn more about your campaign goals and make a donation. Let’s look briefly at how to set up each of these channels for a successful campaign.
(1) social media
Giving Tuesday evolved as an experiment to see whether nonprofits could build a social audience to counter the commercialism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. To take advantage of the awareness that is building for the Giving Tuesday movement on social media, it make sense for social media to play a strong role in your campaign. Here are a few best practices for social media:
1. Know the platforms used by our target audience and adopt them for your campaign. For most small organizations, there is a single platform and it is Facebook. Use no more than two platforms to avoid spreading yourself too thin. (The Ultimate Guide).
2. Design visual content for posts, the messaging details of which are covered in greater detail in the messaging section below, in sizes suited to your chosen platforms: 800 x 800: Best for Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram; 800 x 400: Best for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. (Top 5 Social Media Best Practices).
3. Consider a running theme for messages, such as a “count-down to Giving Tuesday” or “reasons to give.” (There are examples of these posts in the sample campaign, below).
4. Use a service like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Facebook scheduled posts to schedule your posts in advance. (There are free versions of these services. I’ve used both Hootsuite and Buffer and prefer Hootsuite because of the ability to both track social media accounts and schedule posts).
(2) email
One commentator has noted that “[e]mail is one of the most important … channels to use on Giving Tuesday. It’s the best and easiest way to raise money on the day ….” (Turner, M. Giving Tuesday: 5 Steps). Here a few best practices for email marketing:
1. Use emotion-evoking text and images to drive home the point of your campaign.
2. Use effective subject lines. Causevox suggests that an effective subject line is 50 characters or less and should be creative, informative and intriguing without coming on too strong. They offer 50 suggested examples around posing a question (e.g., “When was the last time you made someone smile?”), emphasizing charity (e.g., “Did you forget someone on your holiday list?), demonstrating urgency (e.g., “It’s never too late to make a difference”), and creating intrigue (e.g., “You won’t believe this”). (Hunsaker, E. 50+ Subject Lines).
3. Develop an eye-catching headline. Make your message pop with a clear headline right at the top of your email. With just a quick glance, readers understand what they’re being asked to do. (#GivingTuesday Ideas for 2018).
4. Tell a powerful story. Address the following within the email body: Who/what you’re helping, why the campaign is vital to make change in the world, how your donor’s gift plays a role in that change (hint: the gift is essential!) (#GivingTuesday Ideas for 2018).
5. Make giving as easy as possible. Draw attention to your call to action with a bright “Donate Now” button, as shown below. After clicking on your call to action button, donors should be taken directly to a mobile-responsive landing page where they can make a donation quickly and easily (#GivingTuesday Ideas for 2018).
6. Use the email service associated with your CRM software or another service like Constant Contact, MailChimp or Vertical Response to design and schedule your emails. (Many of these services are free to nonprofits who send a limited number of emails, e.g., under 10,000, each month).
(3) web
A successful Giving Tuesday campaign is dependent for its success on your creating a separate page on your website called a “landing page.” A landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing campaign. When someone responds to a call-to-action (CTA) by clicking on a link in an email or social media post, they are taken to a landing page to learn more and, hopefully, to make a donation.
Best practices for landing pages include the following:
1. Construct an Urgent Headline: Define the mission and goal of the campaign up front with a tagline, like the one shown below from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. (9 of the Best Giving Tuesday Landing Pages).
2. Demonstrate Impact: Delineate how resources will be used, as shown in the example below. (9 of the Best Giving Tuesday Landing Pages).
3. Establish Pre-set Giving Increments: This helps to make giving easy, cutting down on visitor “analysis paralysis,” as shown in the example below. (9 of the Best Giving Tuesday Landing Pages).
4. Make a Simple Call to Action the Centerpiece of the Page: The CTA below in the landing page for the Giving Tuesday campaign of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society includes a red donate today button with an emotion-packed image of a young child. (Warm colors (reds, oranges, and yellows) inspire action). (9 of the Best Giving Tuesday Landing Pages).
5. Ensure the page is optimized for mobile: Most popular webpage builders (e.g., Weebly, WordPress and Kintera Sphere) have drag-and-drop modules that automatically resize on mobile. Test out your page to ensure that it will work on a smart phone or tablet. (9 of the Best Giving Tuesday Landing Pages).
d. Putting it all together - a 7-day giving tuesday campaign
Your target audience isn’t going to show up to support your campaign without some advance notice by you. That’s why most experts recommend starting on your Giving Tuesday campaign in October or earlier.
But we leaders of small nonprofits have to do what is minimally necessary to get things done and not what would be nice if you had a stable full of marketing and fundraising staff members. So we’re going to focus here on rolling out a campaign that lasts for seven days.
It probably goes without saying, but I want to emphasize that “campaign” implies that the various elements of your Giving Tuesday effort (your landing page, email templates, and social media templates) will share common graphical elements (e.g., use of #GivingTuesday hashtag, common colors, graphics & fonts). With that said, here are thoughts about what to do on each day of your seven-day rollout:
(CauseVox, Your #Giving Tuesday Email Templates).
Examples of the countdown and reasons to give theme posts for social media are as follows (ClassBlog. 7-Day Marketing Plan):
(CauseVox. Your #GivingTuesday Email Templates).
(Classy Resource Guides. 28 Giving Tuesday Social Media Templates).
(Classy Resource Guides. 10 Giving Tuesday Email Templates).
(Classy Resource Guides. 28 Giving Tuesday Social Media Templates).
e. following up from your giving tuesday campaign
Your Giving Tuesday follow-up activities should include thanking your supporters and evaluating the success of your campaign.
(1) Thanking supporters
Every donor should receive a thank you email and tax receipt. (Most CRM programs have a built-in capacity to generate these emails. If you aren’t using such a program, I recommend that you do so. There are many low-cost options available that will streamline the task of collecting donations and the related follow up). For larger donations (e.g., $100 or more), I will often also send a hand-written note and ask a board member to call the donor. It will also be useful to use the same email templates you designed for your campaign to thank and provide your followers with information about campaign outcomes. Finally, in all communications with donors, it is useful to convey engagement opportunities beyond monetary donations, such as volunteering or attending an upcoming event. For more ways to successfully thank supporters, see Wild Apricot’s Saying Thank You Like You Mean It.
(2) evaluating the campaign
The final step is gathering everyone who helped to design and implement your campaign together to discuss (1) Goals, objectives and strategies and whether they were achieved; (2) Where you excelled; and (3) Where you fell short. (The Ultimate Guide).
f. additional considerations
A few additional considerations include the following:
1. Both Facebook and Paypal will match donations, which is worth looking into if you use those platforms. This year they’ve promised to match up to $7 million. The downsides are that you will get donations in a lump sum without information on your donors and you will have to jump through a few hoops by registering through the Facebook for Nonprofits page, a process that Facebook says can take 2 to 3 weeks to complete. I applied last Saturday. (It took about 20 minutes). By Monday afternoon (two days later), I received a message from Facebook that our registration was approved. So, don’t feel as though you are too late to apply.
2. GivingTuesday.org puts out a helpful toolkit, which you can get by signing up at: https://www.givingtuesday.org/organizations#block--join-the-movement
3. Since you may be reaching out to prospective donors and those prospects may go look you up on the charity watchdog sites before committing to your cause, it is a good idea to update your profiles on those sites: guidestar.org, CharityNavigator.com, GreatNonprofits.org, and GlassDoor.com.
You can do it. Come it with your fundraising project. Then it’s just 1 new page on your website, 4 email messages, and 11 social media posts. That’s all that’s standing between you and launching your small nonprofit Giving Tuesday Campaign on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Give it a try and leave a comment here to let me know how it goes.
RESOURCES:
9 of the Best #GivingTuesday Landing Pages We’ve Seen (Available at: https://blog.winspireme.com/9-best-giving-tuesday-landing-page-examples).
CauseVox, Your #Giving Tuesday Email Templates + Examples (Available at: https://resources.causevox.com/hubfs/CauseVox's%20GivingTuesday%202018%20Promotional%20Email%20Templates%20+%20Examples.pdf)
Classy Blog. 7-Day Marketing Plan for Your Giving Tuesday Campaign (Available at: https://www.classy.org/blog/7-day-marketing-plan-for-your-givingtuesday-campaign/)
Classy Resource Guides. 10 Giving Tuesday Email Templates (Available at: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/190333/_guides/2016-10_giving-tuesday-emails/giving-tuesday-emails.pdf?t=1541718278872).
Classy Resource Guides. 28 Giving Tuesday Social Media Templates (Available at: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/190333/_guides/2017-10-giving-tuesday-social-media-templates/classy_giving-tuesday-social-media-templates.pdf?t=1541718278872).
Eight #GivingTuesday Best Practices to Make Your Campaign a Success (Available at: https://www.donordrive.com/resources/blog/eight-givingtuesday-best-practices-to-make-your-campaign-a-success/)
Giving Tuesday 2018 Best Practices & Ideas for Nonprofits (Available at: https://www.causevox.com/blog/giving-tuesday-ideas-best-practices/)
#GivingTuesday Ideas for 2018 (Available at: https://www.donorperfect.com/pdf/givingtuesday_2018.pdf)
GivingTuesday Insight Report 2018 (Available at: https://www.givingtuesday.org/lab/2018/01/givingtuesday-insight-report-2018)
Haydon, J. A KISS Plan for Small Nonprofits (Available at: https://www.johnhaydon.com/giving-tuesday-done-right/)
Huntsaker, E. 50+ Subject Lines That Will Get Your Fundraising Emails Opened on December 31st (Available at: https://www.causevox.com/blog/fundraising-subject-lines/)
Ragusa, M. How to Use Powerful Images to Boost Your Online Fundraising (Available at: https://www.qgiv.com/blog/how-to-use-powerful-images-to-boost-your-online-fundraising/)
Schroeder, A. Creating a Giving Tuesday Strategy That’s ‘Just Right’ (9/13/2018)(Available at: https://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/creating-a-giving-tuesday-strategy/)
Stanford Social Innovation Review. The #GivingTuesday Model (Available at: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_givingtuesday_model).
Top 5 Social Media Best Practices for #GivingTuesday (9/28/2017) (Available at: http://www.nptechforgood.com/2017/09/28/top-5-social-media-best-practices-for-givingtuesday/)
Top 10 #GivingTuesday Best Practices for 2018 (Available at: https://www.onecause.com/top-10-givingtuesday-best-practices/)
Turner, M. Giving Tuesday: 5 Steps to Create a Stellar Campaign (Available at: https://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/giving-tuesday-campaign/)
Weiner, G. 31+ #GivingTuesday Ideas (that you haven’t thought of) for 2018 (Available at: https://www.wholewhale.com/tips/giving-tuesday-ideas/)
Wild Apricot Blog. 7 Giving Tuesday Ideas to Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet (Available at: https://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/2018/10/16/giving-tuesday-ideas)
Wild Apricot Blog. The Ultimate Guide to Year-End Giving (Available at: https://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/2018/11/01/year-end-giving)
Barbara Hopkins
December 29, 2018Test