Ep 2 Impactful Giving Tuesday Campaigns
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Sara Mayer: Welcome to Impact Unleashed, the nonprofit edition, where we dive deep into the untapped potential of nonprofits and their remarkable ability to create a lasting impact. I'm your host, Sara Mayer. Let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hi, everyone. Thank you for unleashing your impact on the world with your nonprofit. Today, we're going to talk about one of my most favorite topics. Giving Tuesday. If you haven't heard about Giving Tuesday, it is one of the biggest days of the year for nonprofits, and there is an art to crafting a successful campaign.
Sara Mayer: We will take a deep dive into the strategies for Giving Tuesday, but before we jump in, I think that you will love to hear the power behind Giving Tuesday. There's a history around Giving Tuesday. It has been around for a while, but this is a [00:01:00] global day of giving. It is the day, the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, if you're in the U.
Sara Mayer: S. So typically the Tuesday following Thanksgiving it always is that day. You'll want to be prepared and I want to share some trends with giving Tuesday that you maybe haven't heard about. So this is a couple stats from the 11 remarkable giving stats, giving Tuesday stats. So the 1st 1. Giving Tuesday in 2022 generated 3.
Sara Mayer: 1 billion, 3. 1 billion dollars for nonprofits across the world. That's a 15 percent year over year. So it was 2. 7 in 21. And that was a 25 percent year over year in 2020. It was 2. 4 billion. So this campaign is not going away. [00:02:00] There's also some other really cool stats that I found on the giving block that I want to share if you're not familiar with that site.
Sara Mayer: So for 2022 3. 1 billion. That's awesome. Historically, given giving Tuesday has grown by an average. Of 65 percent year over year, depending on the campaign. Now, it was a little bit down in 2221, but in 2012, when they first started collecting the stats from that's when it started. It was a 12Million dollar campaign.
Sara Mayer: The very next year, it grew by 125%. And hit 27 million more than 800 contributors shared data to giving two to giving Tuesday's database, making it the largest data collection database ever for nonprofits. A cool stat, more than 6, 000 trees were planted on Giving Tuesday in 2022, [00:03:00] as a result of giving Tuesday in 2022.
Sara Mayer: A record 35 million adults participated in Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday had part, had participants in a record 85 countries. Awesome. Love that. And approximately 57 percent of participants are around just a shy 20, 000, 000 people donated in 2022. 10, 000, 000 people volunteered 10, 000, 000 on giving Tuesday and there have been 11 giving Tuesday events.
Sara Mayer: GivingTuesday was created by 92nd Street Y. So this is the 12th year. And on November 29, 2022, GivingTuesday was the number one trender on Twitter worldwide. So that's enough about the stats of GivingTuesday.
Sara Mayer: If you are not A believer at this point that you should be doing a giving Tuesday campaign. I have 1 more reason this can make a [00:04:00] significant impact in your nonprofit. Now, some of the objections I hear when working with nonprofits around giving Tuesday are there's so much noise on giving Tuesday. It's hard to stand out in a crowd.
Sara Mayer: I understand that and I know that we are all competing to fund our mission and we're all competing to try and get donors dollars. But if you're not doing Giving Tuesday, you're not going to be a part of the snowball of success. So you really should be doing it. There is power in doing Giving Tuesday, but Giving Tuesday just doesn't happen by posting a couple things on social media.
Sara Mayer: You really need to create a plan around Giving Tuesday. So there's a couple of considerations that you should think about when planning a Giving Tuesday campaign. The first one is aligning that campaign with the organization's mission and values. And that's always where it starts because [00:05:00] You want to make that donor experience non transactional.
Sara Mayer: You want it to be a relationship. And so when people come into your world around Giving Tuesday, that is the start of a relationship. And many times those gifts may be smaller, they could be larger, but crafting your campaign is really important. There are some really cool, innovative approaches to giving Tuesday, but the first approach is to get in the game.
Sara Mayer: You need to get in the game and create a plan. Obviously, when you're creating the plan, you want to leverage brand awareness and building your brand to promote your campaign. So leveraging social media is one of the key components for giving Tuesday. There are a couple tips on giving Tuesday, as we already talked about.
Sara Mayer: It's a little noisy on giving Tuesday. So you don't want giving Tuesday to be the only day you're talking about giving Tuesday when you are working on your social media, you need [00:06:00] to do some lead ins and teasers leading up to giving Tuesday. And honestly, using the role of storytelling to capture your audience is critical in Giving Tuesday.
Sara Mayer: So when thinking through your social media strategy, think about videos, think about patients, think about board members, think about recipients of your work that can speak to it, maybe on video. Or if you don't have them on video, create a reel or a video Using images, telling a story. What's really cool, there's a book called The 10 Great Stories Founders Tell.
Sara Mayer: If you haven't checked that out, check that out. Giving Tuesday is a perfect time to tell those 10 stories. That takes a little more time. And I will say about social on Giving Tuesday. You can post every hour. Please, post every hour. Post every two [00:07:00] hours. There is absolutely so much noise on that day. The more you post, just remember, everyone is not going to see your post.
Sara Mayer: The algorithm doesn't work that way. So you may post one and say, Oh nobody gave you only posted one time post every hour. If you're not comfortable with every hour, start with every two hours. And you want to tell stories throughout the day that is critical to achieving the mission. Now, there are a couple of other things you want to think about.
Sara Mayer: Obviously you want to set up a way for people to actually give. So make sure that you have a platform. You can also register with Giving Tuesday if you're interested in getting on board with that, but you want to have a way for people to give and you want to tell the story around Giving Tuesday. Why should they give on Giving Tuesday?
Sara Mayer: Why should they do this and get excited about it? So there are a couple of ways that you can make it fun. You can [00:08:00] offer a match. If somebody gets You know, if we get to 5, 000, this donor will match 1, 000, whatever. If in this hour, we do this, then we will give away t shirts or something like that. I've seen people do live videos, Jerry Lewis style telethon, trying to get a lot of donations in an hour.
Sara Mayer: TikTok is great for that. If you're not on TikTok, consider getting on TikTok, Instagram Reels, go live on your Facebook. Facebook still is a great generator of non profit donations. So it's really important to plan out your strategy, but don't forget. Email and I love to do a couple week before teaser email.
Sara Mayer: If you're doing a challenge, make sure people know that you are gearing up for a really big campaign. I'm giving Tuesday and remind [00:09:00] people, especially if you're in a state with a tax credit. That they are, need to do their year end giving. They need to figure out where their impact is going to go.
Sara Mayer: If they're in a tax credit state, they need to make their tax credit donations, and that's really critical to ensuring the success of your campaign. So send an email a week or two before. Send an email the day before. Send an email the day of. Don't worry about sending too much because people love to support nonprofits, especially after Black Friday.
Sara Mayer: Now the other cool thing that you can do, and I think is really important, is to engage your board members and volunteers in Giving Tuesday. Provide them with emails they can share. Provide them with social media they can share. Record them talking about their mission and ask them to share the stuff that you're sharing on your social media as well.
Sara Mayer: So that's really important. Now, it [00:10:00] is important to track and measure your success. Some of the coolest things that you can do on Giving Tuesday are to create some goals for the next four hours and then share those and expressing gratitude to those who are participating in your campaign. I've seen some really cool ways to acknowledge donors.
Sara Mayer: I've seen founders go live and pop confetti in their office. I've seen individualized thank you notes that are delivered electronically. I've seen donor posts, thank yous. And I think it's just really cool to really engage your donors and create excitement around your campaign. Now, It is critical following Giving Tuesday to acknowledge and express gratitude to your donors.
Sara Mayer: Make sure those thank you notes are going out. Maybe write some handwritten thank you notes for the people who've given big. Set that threshold in advance so you know what the strategy is to thank [00:11:00] donors post Giving Tuesday. And I think it's also really important to celebrate your success. Now, if you Maybe didn't do so well on giving Tuesday.
Sara Mayer: Talk about participation, the number of donors that you generated or talk about the fun that you had when putting on the campaign. That's a great way to. Regroup donors and maybe catch donors who are former donors or people on your list that are you're hoping to turn into donors. Maybe catch people that missed your message on giving Tuesday because they simply were bombarded.
Sara Mayer: It's a great way to ensure that everybody has closed the loop and to provide some excitement for the next year. So I encourage you to jump in to the Giving Tuesday bandwagon, and I do have a free guide on my website. So if you go to nonprofitimpactunleashed.co
Sara Mayer: co And then look under [00:12:00] free tools and resources. It's right there. Nonprofitimpactunleashed.co you'll find it right there. There's a free guide. And then if you were looking for us to create, I have a team of five. If you would like us to create your giving. Tuesday campaign items. We would love to do that.
Sara Mayer: Please feel free on that website to reach out to me. We would love to craft your giving Tuesday campaign, but it's time to get to it because you only have to really make an impact till the 21st of November. So let's unleash your impact on the world and generate a lot of revenue for your nonprofit this Giving Tuesday.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Impact Unleashed, the nonprofit edition. I'm so excited you were here on this journey. If you haven't signed up for our newsletters and wonderful resources, please visit nonprofitimpactunleashed. [00:13:00] co. Again that's
Sara Mayer: nonprofitimpactunleashed.co. I look forward to seeing you on our next episode. Of Impact Unleashed.