A quick Google search reveals dozens of creative ideas to make #GivingTuesday a success for your nonprofit. We trust you’ll come up with all the fun and clever ways to make #GivingTuesday interesting and memorable for your supporters.
But before you put the quirky or crazy, out-of-the-box plans in place, make sure you have the basics covered. We want to share five of the most important tips we believe go into making a successful #GivingTuesday campaign. Once you’ve got these squared away, the rest is icing on the cake.
- Join #GivingTuesday. First things first. Make sure people can find you as a participating organization. List yourself on GivingTuesday.org/join.
- Start early and be intentional. We hope you’ve already started planning, actually. But if you haven’t, you must begin yesterday today. Don’t make #GivingTuesday an afterthought that you cobble together the week before. Set some goals and put a concrete plan in place to get the most from this day’s opportunities.
- Test, test, test. Test your #GivingTuesday donation page on multiple devices. Test buttons and forms. Test text-to-give numbers. Proof and edit all communications. Test everything that will be forward-facing and leading donors to give. You have only one day for this campaign, and if you spend time fighting bugs in your software or correcting mistakes in your communications, you’ve seriously impeded your best efforts.
- Tell your story. If we’ve said it once on our blog, we’ve said it a million times. Tell your story to potential donors using compelling facts, images, and video. Highlight the impact of your work so supporters know how their donations will be used. This day is not the time to become complacent with storytelling; ramp it up by telling a specific story of how money raised on a previous #GivingTuesday was used.
- Say thank you. Getting and keeping your donors (those who come through #GivingTuesday or through other channels) depends upon relationship. Make sure you offer “thanks” in a variety of ways (we have a few ideas here). For social proof on #GivingTuesday, consider adding a “thank you” ticker-type feed of each person who donated to your website’s sidebar.
The final step for your #GivingTuesday campaign is perhaps the absolute most important: measure the results. Make sure you have systems in place to track your efforts and their performance. Even the cleverest appeal becomes irrelevant if you have no clue to its efficacy.
You definitely need a robust donor data management system to help you keep track of your #GivingTuesday activity and the donations it produces. Try Donor.com for free for 30 days.
