Post on 27-May-2020
CauseVox // How To Plan A Successful GivingTuesday Campaign- Page 1
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How To Plan A Successful GivingTuesday Campaign
Learn how you can make the most of GivingTuesday for your nonprofit
CauseVox // How To Plan A Successful GivingTuesday Campaign- Page 2
Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... 2!
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3!
Getting Started: Setting A Goal ............................................................................................ 5!
Determining Rewards And Donation Tiers .......................................................................... 8!
Rallying An Audience ............................................................................................................ 12!
Crafting Communications And Storytelling ...................................................................... 14!
Using Personal Fundraising Pages ...................................................................................... 18!
Publicizing Your Crowdfunding Campaign ......................................................................... 21!
Building Your Campaign On CauseVox ............................................................................. 24!
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Introduction With the fall season just around the corner, the onslaught of holidays is coming full
speed ahead. It’s likely you’ve already seen the first of many commercials advertising
this season’s hottest deals, toys, and gadgets, and stores are already stocking their
shelves with decorations and giftwrap galore. For nonprofits, getting into the holiday
spirit means launching your own major fundraising campaign, often referred to as a
“holiday appeal” or “end-of-year campaign.”
And for the last couple of years, a new
“holiday” has put even more emphasis
and spotlight on the good work
nonprofits are doing during this time of
year, and it’s giving everyone a chance to
shift the focus from getting to giving.
Four years ago, the 92 Street Y in NYC
and the United Nations Foundation joined forces to create #GivingTuesday, a one-day
annual movement focused on charitable giving during the holiday season.
The thinking was, if there is a Black Friday and a Cyber Monday, why not a Giving
Tuesday? Since then, #GivingTuesday has expanded into a worldwide movement for
philanthropy. In it’s fourth year, #GivingTuesday saw the biggest increase in donations
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yet, growing from $45.6 million in online donations in 2014 to a whopping $116.4
million in 2015 according to the information compiled by Impact Lab.
Now, #GivingTuesday 2016 is coming up on November 29th and it promises to be the
best year yet.
“#GivingTuesday 2016 is coming up on November 29th and it promises to be the best year yet …” tweet this
Since as early as July, we’ve been sharing some resources and information on the
CauseVox blog on how to plan for your own campaign, but this eBook is meant to
provide a full overview from start to finish. From setting a goal, and crafting your
story, we’ll walk you through each step to prepare for the big day. Let’s get started!
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Getting Started: Setting A Goal Although #GivingTuesday is only a 24-hour fundraising campaign (although you can
incorporate it into your Year-End campaign or use it to end your fall campaign) it’s still
important to set a realistic, yet aspirational fundraising goal. And perhaps because of
the timeframe, it’s even imperative that you choose a goal that stands out from your
ongoing fundraising.
Here are some initial questions to think about:
• What have we raised in past fundraising or GivingTuesday campaigns?
• What did similar organizations raise for their GivingTuesday campaign?
• How much do you need to be able to make your desired impact?
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Your big picture goal for the holiday season or the calendar year may remain the same
(i.e. preventing malaria, building schools, rescuing dogs), but this is a great opportunity
to try a unique approach – a story that makes your organization and your quest to
better the world different, personal, and relatable right now.
Based on your answers to the three questions above, break down your long term
mission and your story into a short term, tangible action for your campaign. Some
examples:
Item Specific: We want to send 100 bed nets to a specific village in Malawi
Dollar Specific: Help us to provide novels for five classrooms in a middle school for the
start of the new semester in January ($1,000)
Time Specific: Fund arrangements for foster homes for 5 shelter dogs within 24 hours.
These uber-specific mini goals all feed into your larger one, yet give people a sense of
the impact they can make with their #GivingTuesday donation – the more you can
show immediate impact and results, the stronger your appeal will be.
As with other fundraising campaigns, remember to think about these new goals in
context of your current financials, and based on what is achievable. Although we
certainly are no strangers to failure, and even embrace it, we also think it’s important
to set yourself up for success as much as possible. The SMART framework is one
approach:
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Specific
Measureable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely You can read more about SMART goals and get other examples on our blog. You should
also consider that hundreds (thousands even) of other organizations will also be
participating in #GivingTuesday and coming up with their own unique fundraising goals
– so when you are creating yours, think about the story you will tell and the
opportunity to make an impact beyond November 29th.
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Interested in reading up on what other organizations have done for their
#GivingTuesday campaign? Check out the Grey2K and National Domestic Violence
Hotline case studies
Determining Rewards And Donation Tiers Givingaways For Giving Many organizations use rewards and premiums (gifts) to incentivize donations, and it’s
become a common element of crowdfunding campaigns. Rewards can range from the
most basic, like donor acknowledgment on social media, to high-end gifts or
recognition by the organization.
Many giving challenges are successful because they use prizes and incentives as a key
part of their strategy. America’s Giving Challenge and GiveMN are just a couple of the
bigger giving challenges in the last few years that have awarded extra funds to
organizations that “beat” their peers for raising the most amount of money in a certain
timeframe, by having the most donors, etc.
Think of opportunities to reward your donors throughout the 24 hours of
#GivingTuesday. You could offer an exclusive meetup with people from your
organization or an entry for a trip to see your work on the ground. Or maybe you have
handcrafted goods or gifts that directly relate to your impact. And perhaps it’s as
simple as sending the first 10 people to donate a handwritten thank you letter or
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featuring them in your next newsletter. If you’ve been debating using prizes and
incentives, #GivingTuesday could be the perfect opportunity to test this tactic.
Keep in mind:
• Everyone loves surprises. Go beyond the standard automated email thank you
and mail a handwritten note, or send a gift after the donation has been
completed, instead of using it to push donations.
• Align with your mission. If you choose to give back to your donors, pick
something that fits your purpose. Examples: a dog bandana or collar if you’re an
animal shelter, a personalized or branded notebook if you’re an educational
organization, or a recipe guide made by your team if you work on food and
hunger issues.
• People, not premiums. Think about what you would want from a nonprofit you
support, and choose something that creates a deeper connection with your
donors. For instance, an exclusive conference call with the Executive Director,
or a special note from someone who was impacted by the campaign. Use it as a
way to cultivate relationships with new donors beyond #GivingTuesday.
Establishing Gift Tiers Another popular feature of crowdfunding is using donation tiers to provide several
options of giving for a campaign. It takes the guesswork out for the donors, but also
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gives you a chance to tie your goals more specifically to your mission, giving the donor
a better handle on what they are supporting.
#GivingTuesday is the perfect opportunity to use gift tiers to show that extra level of
impact. To determine the donation tiers for your campaign, take a look at your total
fundraising goal, what the funds will be used for, and what it will take to get there. Each
campaign will be different, so your tiers may vary from one project to the next.
“#GivingTuesday is the perfect opportunity to use gift tiers to show that extra level of impact…” tweet this
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Here’s an example from World Bicycle Relief’s donation tiers:
It’s not always easy to match donation levels with specific impact goals, but when you
can, it really increases your chances of success, especially on a day when donors’
attention is being called to thousands of options. If you can clearly show the path from
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investment to impact, you’ve got an advantage. You can create donation tiers quickly
and easily through your CauseVox admin dashboard, and edit them at any time.
Rallying An Audience An essential element in planning your #GivingTuesday campaign is determining your
audience. Will you be using it as an opportunity to attract new donors and grow your
community? Or are you focusing on enhancing existing donor relationships?
Whichever strategy you choose, it will affect the campaign concept and fundraising
goals.
Through social media, nonprofits have been
growing their communities at exponential rates,
finding thousands of new supporters through
Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
And if you combine those folks with the people
on your email list, your direct mail list, your
partners, and all the other channels you use to
get out your message, the potential for success is endless. Additionally, you’ll receive
exposure as a #GivingTuesday nonprofit partner.
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Activating Your Network So, you’ve got all these people, and you’ve got a countdown to #GivingTuesday. Now
what? It’s time to get your supporters working on your behalf – after all, they can be
just as much of an ambassador for the cause as your staff. As we’ve seen in the last few
years, and as the campaign’s organizers recommend, it’s never too early to start
communicating about your participation in #GivingTuesday. So, here are a few ways to
rally your community and get them ready for November 29th:
• Give a sneak peek. Pull reports on your most active donors and supporters, and
send them a special email a few days before #GivingTuesday. Give them the
rundown, and ask them to spread the word in their networks.
• Call your partners. If you’re working with a specific partner for #GivingTuesday,
you should have a joint marketing plan ready to deploy. And if you’re not, create
a “family and friends” list of select past partners, sponsors, peer organizations,
and champions to call or email in advance of the campaign launch, asking them to
share with their networks. Prepare a simple marketing toolkit with sample social
media updates, relevant imagery, and links.
• Head to the water cooler. If you’re doing a lot of listening on social media and
online, you know the people who are always mentioning you on Twitter, tagging
you on Facebook, or posting about you in blogs and discussion forums. Go to
these people, and tell them about #GivingTuesday and a hint at what you’ll be
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doing. Think about a way you can acknowledge or thank them for being an
ambassador for your cause.
And here are some other steps you can take to build a community for your campaign.
Crafting Communications And Storytelling Your campaign concept is mapped out, your audience is primed, and now you need to
craft your story. This is your chance to really bring a hyper-focused look at the work
you’re doing and make a connection with your donors in a 24-hour time period.
Just like with other types of fundraising campaigns, there are a few questions to think
about when creating a communications plan for an event like #GivingTuesday:
• What is the goal of this campaign?
• How do we achieve it?
• What does success look like?
• What is the impact?
• Who or what is involved and what’s the story?
• Will we (or can we) carry the story through the holiday season and beyond?
Your campaign timeline may already be set, but now perhaps you can dive deeper into
the communications tools you will use, and the story you will tell on November 29th.
Learn more about some of these elements here.
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Calls-to-Action and Storytelling Mediums The story you tell and how you tell it is impacted by the answers to these questions as
well. Some campaigns may be better served by frequent email updates or blog posts,
with a text-heavy component. But others may need a more visually appealing or
interactive approach, with plenty of photos, videos, or graphics.
For a #GivingTuesday campaign, these options tend to be limited because you’re
working on a very short timeline, which means you may want to cut down on some of
your typical tactics and focus on a couple that will bring you the most bang for your
buck (and time).
Despite the fact that most of your funds will be donated in the 24 hour-period of
#GivingTuesday, it’s still important to start the story in advance of November 29th, to
give your community time to connect with your cause. And for those who choose to
fundraise within their networks on your behalf, they need the opportunity to create a
personalized version of your appeal and do some storytelling of their own.
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Don’t start too far in advance– stories with no immediate call-to-action won’t be
absorbed as well, and you want to avoid fatiguing your donors before you get to the
big day. Consider teasing out your campaign theme and sharing a short story a few
weeks before #GivingTuesday, when people really start thinking about their holiday
giving and gifting plans.
Then over the next couple of weeks, amp things up with save the date messages on
social media and your website, and send at least one email to your list a week in
advance, with a strong story and a reminder of the #GivingTuesday date. Your most
relevant and resonant stories should be saved for #GivingTuesday itself.
Whether you choose to use one story and share different pieces throughout the day,
or share multiple stories that all point back to your fundraising ask, the content should
be focused, emotionally strong, and timely. Bonus points for a new perspective or
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angle you’ve never told before, for using humor or hope in new ways, or creating an
innovative visual presentation. Don’t use the same story you told two weeks before.
Ultimately, your #GivingTuesday day story should make someone want to give to your
organization. Does it do that? There are so many directions you can take with
storytelling and communicating for crowdfunding campaigns.
“Your #GivingTuesday day story should make someone want to give to your organization …” tweet this
No matter what you choose, it’s important to keep in mind relevancy, personalization
and connection, timing, and your audience’s behaviors and interests to make sure you
get the right mix for the best results. Here are a few ideas to get you going:
• Create a matching campaign with a partner or major donor. Matching campaigns
work extremely well for short timelines – they can be completed even in minutes
or a few hours!
• Do something fun and different on social media, using a platform you’ve been
wanting to play with, or a hashtag that will go great with #GivingTuesday.
• Tell stories in 24 hours, or a complete story in 24 installments, and consider
locking it with fundraising achievements throughout the day. People love “To be
continued…” storylines.
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• Keep them coming back for more! Integrate a physical or virtual event for extra
engagement on November 29th. Think of ways the online giving could correlate
to an activity on the ground.
• Focus on your donors, and use the day to show why people give during the
holiday season. In other words, make use of the #GivingTuesday concept and
show your community some love!
Using Personal Fundraising Pages f you’re looking to take your #GivingTuesday campaign one step farther, personal or
peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising is a great way to do it. Research shows that people are
more likely to donate to a cause after being asked by someone they know. Think of
how many times you supported a project because your nephew, neighbor, or
grandmother asked you?
More Resources, More Reach, More Results Let’s face it: you’re probably already feeling pressure to reach yearly fundraising goals
for your organization, and an intense 24-hour crowdfunding campaign may only seem
to pile it on. Crowdfunding is hard work, we know, but incorporating personal
fundraising is worth it for many reasons, such as:
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You Get Lots Of Extra Help
Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns on CauseVox raise two times more than regular
crowdfunding campaigns. Your community is your best asset. While your team is busy
managing multiple tasks behind the scenes at your organization, your donors are out
there making connections, building awareness, finding new supporters, and raising
money for you – for free.
Your Name Goes Far and Wide
One of the greatest benefits of P2P fundraising is that your cause and brand are
introduced to potentially hundreds and thousands of new people – all potential donors
and activists. Sally in Montana may have never heard of you or asked her entire book
club to donate if it wasn’t for her granddaughter Lizzie sending her a personal note and
a link to her fundraising page.
You Are Making It Personal
A lot of donors support a cause because of a personal connection. When you take it a
step further and let them recruit family and friends through a personal fundraising
page, they can make the story their own. The deeper the connection, the deeper the
impact.
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Set Them Up For Success You have to give your community the right tools to help them tell their story well, and
to help make your campaign a success. After all, they’re supporting you because they
want to, and because it makes them feel good. So it’s in your best interest to make
their experience fun, easy, educational, and fulfilling.
This is even more important for #GivingTuesday, because they, and you, only have so
much time to make a strong enough appeal for donations – so preparing your
community is an absolute must in this instance. Consider setting up mini training
sessions with fundraisers via web conference at least a month before November 29th,
providing online toolkits and tips, and creating a special email series with behind-
thescenes updates, exclusive content, and notes of encouragement.
You may even think about asking people to “sign up” in advance, so you know exactly
who will be doing P2P fundraising for #GivingTuesday, and as much as possible, you can
work directly with them to achieve their goals (and your organization’s). Just as
important is helping your fundraisers craft their own personalized versions of your
#GivingTuesday story to use in their campaigns.
This is why it’s essential to communicate with your fundraisers several weeks in
advance, so you can share your message and provide them all the tools necessary for
customization. Research shows that personal stories provide a much better return on
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donations than “generic” ones, so think about providing a list of options for how to
make your goals personal for someone fundraising on your behalf.
Check out our ultimate guide to peer-to-peer fundraising for more best practices that
you can apply to #GivingTuesday, including the basics on fundraising and crowdfunding
technology, and ways to empower your supporters to achieve their goals.
Publicizing Your Crowdfunding Campaign So you’ve got a great story, an enthusiastic community of supporters, and an awesome
goal for your #GivingTuesday campaign. A little love and attention from writers and
journalists would be helpful, too, right? Publicity can be a great way to get your brand
and campaign to the masses, and appeal to folks that might not usually come across it
otherwise, even through friends and family. It also can lend some credibility to your
campaign– a positive article or blog post could go very far in pushing prospective
donors to check you out and join the campaign.
The good news is that #GivingTuesday has already made a name for itself in the couple
of years since it began, and has been covered by all manner of news outlets. Most of
the philanthropic community knows about this movement, and so now the key is
making your campaign stand out from the thousands of others participating.
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Reaching Out to Reporters You may not have the time or resources to pitch journalists and bloggers about your
#GivingTuesday efforts, but if it makes sense to add a publicity component, here are a
few approaches to consider in your strategy:
1) Reach out to the #GivingTuesday team about your plan: they may be able to
provide some media opportunities for you – they’re all about promoting their
partners!
2) Make the most of free search tools in the places journalists are listening: Twitter,
Help A Reporter Out (HARO), Seek or Shout, and others. Check to see which
ones are writing about your issue area, or about unique stories in philanthropy or
tech.
3) Craft your pitch so that it can be easily used for multiple journalists, but then
take the time to tailor them and pull out Specific attributes of your campaign
that would be appealing to the individual reporter or blogger. Don’t send a mail
merge – it’s worth the effort to personalize your pitches.
4) Think beyond traditional media and consider reaching out to radio, podcast
services, niche bloggers, or even your local TV station. If you’re in a college town,
call the student newspaper. Ask partners organizations to mention you in an e-
newsletter or on social media, especially if they are a wellrecognized name with a
larger audience.
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5) Prepare campaign materials to include in your pitch. Create a toolkit with media,
with links, logos and approved photos, and quotes from spokespeople or
champions. GivingTuesday.org has an assortment of toolkits for various
audiences.
6) Take the opportunity to begin cultivating relationships with a select few
journalists or bloggers for future campaigns. Or if you already have a great
relationship with a reporter, give them an exclusive. Reaching Out to Reporters
You may not have the time or resources to pitch journalists and bloggers about
your #GivingTuesday efforts, but if it makes sense to add a publicity component,
here are a few approaches to consider in your strategy:
For more best practices and recommendations on planning a pitch strategy, see our
guide on publicizing your campaign.
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Building Your Campaign On CauseVox We know you’re itching to get started on your GivingTuesday campaign, and we’re
ready to help you make it happen! If you haven’t already, we hope you will sign up for
CauseVox today to support your crowdfunding needs.
As a CauseVox user, here’s just a few of the features you’ll have access to:
• Easily customizable crowdfunding site to integrate with your branding and design
fully.
• Powerful crowdfunding tools to help you raise more funds (donation metrics,
impact metrics, donation receipts, mobile-optimization, etc)
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• !Easy and clean user interface and admin dashboard to manage donors, create
content, adjust your campaign, and get real-time updates
• Personal fundraising pages to help you get new donors and reach new networks.
• Dedicated customer service to help you be as successful as possible, in addition
to free guides, toolkits, case studies and resources.
There’s a lot more where that came from, and the CauseVox team is your number one
resource. Don’t hesitate to reach out for more information on any of the topics
covered in this guide, and feel free to browse our website for related content if you
want to dig a little deeper.
Ready to get started? Sign up on CauseVox today.
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