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Giving Tuesday began in 2012 through the efforts of the 92nd Street Y and its Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact to “inspire hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.”
Last year, it raised $2.7 billion on November 30 in the U.S. alone.
Giving Tuesday is one of the best opportunities to accelerate fundraising for your nonprofit.
In this post, we’re going to cover 8 Nonprofit Marketing Must-Haves for Giving Tuesday. We will cover:
- How do I define my campaign goals for Giving Tuesday?
- How do I get my Giving Tuesday campaign items ready?
- How do I market my cause for Giving Tuesday?
- How do I reach out to my existing audience for Giving Tuesday?
- How do I join the larger Giving Tuesday conversation?
- What should I do on Giving Tuesday?
- What should I do after Giving Tuesday?
- How do I assess my 2022 Giving Tuesday Campaign?
Now, let’s dive in and make 2023’s Giving Tuesday the best yet!
1. How do I define my campaign goals for Giving Tuesday?
Your campaign’s goal is key to helping you set the focus for the content that you will create to get your 2023 Giving Tuesday message out there into the world, as well as your ask, and overall game plan leading up to Giving Tuesday.
🗓️ add Giving Tuesday 2022 to your calendar
Identifying the theme and structure of your campaign will help you determine best place and means by which to reach your donors. Here are some questions to help get you started:
- Do I have a target amount that I want to reach in donations?
- What does my timeline look like for planning and execution?
- How will our Giving Tuesday campaign make donors feel?
- How will donors discover my Giving Tuesday campaign?
- What else do I need to get out of this campaign to make it worth the effort?
2. How do I get my Giving Tuesday campaign items ready?
Once you’ve identified the message you want to get out there, it’s time to figure out how to do it! When planning a multi-touch nonprofit marketing campaign, you’ll need to think about the donor’s experience and how to get in front of them, at the right time, with the right message.
If you’re targeting different segments of your audience as part of your campaign, you will want to consider this for each one.
Here are some assets you’ll need to create:
- Ensure you have an easy donation option
- Create Social Media Graphics (See Harness + Canva)
- Create Facebook Ads & Video
- Write Emails
- Set up Auto Text Messaging
- Draft a few Social Media Posts
- Add Social Proofing (boosts conversions by up to 10%)
But no matter the means you get your message across you want to make sure your existing and potential donors understand the impact on your cause that their donation will have. Case studies and concrete outcomes of previous campaigns are some great ways to do this.
3. How do I market my cause for Giving Tuesday?
Part of marketing your cause is identifying what works and doesn’t so you can improve and refine your strategies for Giving Tuesday 2024. Before you launch your campaign, you want to ensure you’re able to track all of your efforts. Make sure you’ve installed your Pixels and Analytic snippets everywhere you are driving donors.
You’ll also want to:
- Publish your landing page, pop-up forms, and donate button
- Update Social Media Cover Photos
- Schedule your Social Media Posts (6 Tips)
- Launch your Social Media Ads
- Schedule your Emails
If you’re using a donor automation tool, you have the ability to schedule auto text-messages to thank donors or send them a nice "GIF” after a contribution. A thank you can make a huge difference. A study found that even a simple email that thanked a donor for a pledge “cut in half the number of participants who later backed out of their pledge.”
4. How do I reach out to my existing audience for Giving Tuesday?
Your nonprofit’s existing audience already supports your cause, and they’re the perfect place to start when gearing up for Giving Tuesday. Let them know what your nonprofit is going to be doing on Giving Tuesday, encourage them to share your posts, and if there are anyways they can get involved be sure to let them know.
Here are a few tips to keep your donors in the know:
- Schedule out email messages that are just for you existing donors on Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday (maybe even earlier to give them a super exciting sneak peak)
- Encourage donors to connect on social media and share your posts
- Explain to your donors how they can help get the word out
5. How do I join the larger Giving Tuesday conversation?
On Tuesday, November 29th, 2022, #GivingTuesday will be trending. GivingTuesday’s own impact report from 2021 shared that “social media activity was present in every country and territory in the world.” The reach this day gives nonprofits like yours is massive. On Twitter, for example, users sent “700% more visitors to donation pages on Giving Tuesday than on a typical day.”
To take full advantage of this opportunity, brainstorm with your team to see what kind of out-of-the-box ideas may be available. Giving Tuesday receives a lot of online engagement.
Here are a few questions to inspire some creativity:
- How could you make online engagement into an ongoing engagement?
- Would you include donors in your story for thank you shout-outs?
- What fun things (pay it forward, serenade an unsuspecting barista, balance a spoon on the nose) could you encourage followers to do in real life on GivingTuesday?
But no matter what you come up with, be ready to jump into the conversation and add to it. Don’t just promote your cause, engage with others. This is business, so stick to the tone of your nonprofit, but don’t forget to have fun. People are attracted to authenticity. Some easy ways to engage from your nonprofit social media page are:
- Comment, share, and engage with others posting about GivingTuesday
- Be sure that someone is monitoring your Social Media pages, also called “social listening”
- Prepare to help people donate if they face errors (delight your donors)
6. What should I do on Giving Tuesday?
Now, you already know you want to engage on social media, but if your organization has an accessible location with a nice space, you might want to consider throwing a party to celebrate Giving Tuesday. Use social media to build the expectation of a possible party and then send out invitations to donors in the area.
Details to consider include:
- What’s the purpose of your party?
- How can you make it easy for people to attend?
- Who is your target audience?
7. What should I do after Giving Tuesday?
People like to be thanked! We all do. How you thank people for supporting your organization can set your nonprofit apart.
Now, most nonprofits often have their thanking process down. So, for Giving Tuesday, you can use your normal routes of thanking or you can try different ways. Social media shout-outs, donor highlights in an email, or a surprise delivery of cookies are just a few examples.
If you’re looking for some inspiration to help brainstorm new ways to express gratitude toward your donors you can ask yourself some of these questions:
- What thanking strategies are successful for other nonprofits?
- Have you asked your donors how they’d like to be thanked?
- What are the best ways to contact your donors?
For more tips on how to thank donors thoughtfully, below are some articles to get you started.
- How do I thank Donors Thoughtfully?
- How to Thank Donors, by Harness
8. How do I assess my 2022 Giving Tuesday Campaign?
You did! Well, depending on when you read this, you will have done it. So, now that it’s over, now what? Well, it’s time to take a high-level look at the overall analytics from Giving Tuesday 2022. Key metrics every marketer likes to know include:
- How many people did I reach from each channel?
- How many people clicked my aorganic social post, or visited my website?
- How many people opened, clicked, and/or donated?
- How much did my nonprofit raise overall?
Looking at these will give you insight into whether you reached your goals and how you might want to adjust your campaign the following year.