Giving Tuesday 2023: LIVE Q&A

Welcome to our October live Q&A session! In this insightful session, our team answers some  of the most frequently asked questions about how nonprofits can leverage Giving Tuesday, the global day of giving, for their benefit. 

Whether you're a seasoned pro or participating for the first time, this Q&A is your guide to making Giving Tuesday 2023 a success. Watch on to gain valuable insights and tips for your nonprofit's fundraising strategies.

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1. How does a nonprofit register for Giving Tuesday?

Allison:  For giving Tuesday, you don't actually have to register at all. There's nothing special that you have to do in order to participate in Giving Tuesday. You can participate or launch whatever kind of campaign that you want!

If you decide not to launch your own campaign for Giving Tuesday, you can jump on to some other community ones, and those might require some kind of registration because you’d be participating in someone else's landing page. The Giving Tuesday website does offer some places where you can find campaigns that are going on in your local area; otherwise, if you want to do something yourself, there's nothing special that you have to do to sign up.

Something that is encouraged is to use the Giving Tuesday hashtag. If you wanted to add on your own hashtag as well, that's also encouraged to do; however, you can use just the Giving Tuesday one. This helps people find your organization.

It’s also encouraged to use the Giving Tuesday logo. One thing that's really great about the Giving Tuesday logo is that it's heart-shaped, so it's very easy to integrate into whatever kind of visual assets that you might have. In fact, on the Giving Tuesday website, they actually encourage you to take their logo and get creative with it, so you can re-brand it for your organization. They make that very easy for you to do. On givingtuesday.org, you can download whichever version of their logo you might want to use, open the source file, and then redesign it however you might want to. 

2. Why should a nonprofit participate in Giving Tuesday?

Allison: Giving Tuesday has been around since 2012, so for just over a decade now. Over the years, it's become more mainstream, which primes people to anticipate this day as an opportunity to give. They come prepared to donate, and many are on the lookout for new organizations to support. While some may have their go-to charities, others are searching for something new, making this a great opportunity for nonprofits to find new donors.

In 2022, organizations raised about $3.2 billion in total, just in the United States, so it’s a big day of giving. If you're having an end-of-year campaign, which hopefully all nonprofits consider in some kind of capacity, Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity to kick that off. It comes right after Thanksgiving and was originally conceived as a way for everyone who is buying and consuming things on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to turn it around and give back as well. People are generally more prepared to donate around this time period.

What's great about Giving Tuesday is that while it's an opportunity to ask for monetary donations, it doesn't necessarily have to be if you don’t want to go about it that way. You could do something a bit more creative like asking people to give their time to your organization. Or you could even think about using it as an opportunity to give back to your supporters, so flipping it around and finding a way to say thank you with a gift or some sort of opportunity.

Jeanette: Yeah, absolutely. 

If there are nonprofits that are also social enterprises, and they’re really looking to stand out in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday scene, but they can't necessarily discount products because they need to raise money for their mission, [Giving Tuesday] can be an opportunity to tie in the concept of giving back through purchasing things.

There are a lot of opportunities, and as Allison said, there’s no guidelines that you have to follow or anything like that, so you're free to be as creative as you want, which we encourage!

3. What tools and resources are available to create a Giving Tuesday campaign?

Savanah: There's definitely no shortage of resources available online for Giving Tuesday. We have some of our own at the Nonprofit Marketing Academy, but to get started, I highly recommend checking out what Giving Tuesday themselves have to offer just because they do a lot of the legwork for you, like Allison shared about providing logo files.

[Shares screen] Here we go. They have their landing page for nonprofits that has a bunch of resources. There's a workbook that you can download as a Google doc and customize for your organization. There’s key messaging points, and there's also a lot of pre-created emails for you to use. 

I really like this timeline they have available. On the logos page, there are also additional assets such as gifs that your organization can leverage. Pexels has a bank of free stock images that you can use as well. Giving Tuesday also has their own Canva account with templates that you can customize. They've already done a lot of that work for you, that you can then, you know, customize for yourself to use, or for supporters to use, or for the organization to use. But they really make it easy for anyone to take action using these resources.

Jeanette: Thanks, Savanah, those are some really great examples of 'done for you' things that, again, you can customize. We'll make sure to link those because the goal is to make Giving Tuesday as seamless as possible, so it doesn't feel like you have a whole nother thing to do during the holidays. And those resources definitely help with that.

4. What is the most important thing to do on Giving Tuesday?

Savanah: Have a goal. We'll probably talk about this a bit more later, but having a clear goal that your community can work towards is going to be really key, people know what action they should be taking to support your organization on Giving Tuesday.  You don't want to be vague about it; you want to be specific. 

Jeanette: Yes, absolutely. And one thing to remember is people don’t necessarily care about helping you raise $5,000. If that's your messaging, you might want to think about a specific, quantifiable impact that someone's contribution could have towards your overall goal. Saying, "for every $25 we get, we're going to be able to help one student in our program do XYZ," that might be more effective than just saying the bigger goal. But internally, yes, always having a goal is crucial.

Allison: My advice actually revolves around something not to do on Giving Tuesday, which is not to expect it to be your biggest fundraiser of the year. 

While it's a great opportunity to fundraise and people are looking to donate on this day, it's also a highly saturated market on this day, too. To expect everyone to put all their money to you and your cause is probably not going to be as effective as you would hope. So, take advantage of Giving Tuesday, but keep your expectations realistic, rather than anticipating it will raise a huge number of funds as other big fundraisers might throughout the year.

Jeanette: Yes, another great tip. Have your goal, but be realistic about your expectations. If you've done Giving Tuesday in the past, base your goal off what your results were from that with maybe a small increase. Or, if your audience has significantly grown, adjust your expectations accordingly. If this is your first year, be very flexible with expectations and expect that most people who will donate are likely going to be your current supporters. While there is the opportunity for gaining new supporters, as Allison mentioned, it's really hard to convert someone on a one-day campaign if they've never donated to you before.

My tip is for those of you who have already conducted a Giving Tuesday campaign: make sure you thank supporters for last year's contributions. Reinforce how that money was used, and make sure that message is a singular one without a direct call to action or ask. What you don't want to do is say, “Hey, thanks. We did this, and now here’s this other goal that we have.” Space it out. 

If you're only going to do two communications, do a recap with a thank you, and then a couple days later you can ask them to reignite the impact that they’ve made by giving again.

5. If your nonprofit could only do one thing for Giving Tuesday, what should it be?

Savanah: You want to make it really fun and easy for your community to participate in what you're doing on Giving Tuesday—that could be creating a social media action kit or just a toolkit, swipe files—so people can easily share. 

You want to make sure that you have some approved messaging that is going to help people talk about what's going on because it’s really tough to make your Giving Tuesday campaign go viral if you don't have people to help you get the word out. You want to take as much work off them as possible by giving them some really easy actions to take. This could be as simple as a Google document with some social media copy, some email copy, and a couple of suggested images. It doesn't need to be really, really complicated; the simpler, the better. 

And if you can work in some fun way to track how people are sharing the message, like if there's a peer-to-peer element or a competitive element, that's even more fun. But at least having something that someone can take action on is going to make all the difference.

6. What are the best practices for Giving Tuesday?

Allison: I have a few different suggestions of best practices for Giving Tuesday. The first is to  consider using just one platform to drive your traffic for donations. This could be social media, a landing page on your website, or a crowdfunding page like GoFundMe. Directing everyone to one place makes it easier to track contributions and shows potential donors how much has already been raised. Seeing that others have already contributed has been demonstrated to encourage more people to want to give to you also.

This approach can encourage more people to give if they see that a lot of people are already donating to you. But then also, you have the opportunity to optimize it better as well because most nonprofits' bandwidth is pretty tight. So having just one place where you are driving everyone means you can optimize that one page, whether it's a landing page making sure it's mobile-friendly, or creating better assets or visual look for some of those crowdfunding platforms because some might have specific sizes and things that you need. It all takes a little bit of time, so by just choosing one, you'll be better off.

Next, when you reach out to share about your campaign, segment your audiences and change your messaging depending on who you’re reaching out to. This means you might send different emails to supporters, volunteers, or past donors and update the language a little bit to make sure that it appeals to them

And then last, making sure you have — and I think Savannah alluded to this earlier — but having a specific ask or goal, rather than just a general donation call. So not just saying, "Hey, please donate to us; here's what we do in general." That's not going to drive people to donate nearly as much as having an idea of what their dollars are going to do specifically. So maybe it is, "$25 will help to buy a backpack for a student." A campaign that wants to generate funds to supply an entire classroom and makes it more specific than just "we help students" is going to be a lot more successful in getting people to donate to you.

Savanah: I also have a couple [best practices to share] as well. 

You should start communicating early. The bulk of your work for Giving Tuesday should not be happening on Giving Tuesday or the day before Giving Tuesday. You can announce your campaign as early as now or at the beginning of November, but you should start that communication early and start prepping early. That way on Giving Tuesday, pretty much everything should be in the works and happening.

Another thing is identifying what success looks like even if your success isn’t maybe reaching a fundraising goal. Maybe it’s engaging a certain number of donors or supporters, but habing a really clear idea of what is going to make your team feel like you’ve achieved something at the end of this campaign. 

Then setting some stretch goals, so if you do have a big goal that you’re trying to reach like $10,000, figure out some times to celebrate if you reach goals in between. So maybe it’s getting 25% of the way there or 50%. This could be an internal or external celebration—so maybe it’s more of a thing that you and your team are celebrating because you’ve reached the goal or it’s something you’re celebrating in a giving circle or in a community online—but figure out a way to celebrate those wins along the way. It makes the day feel more celebratory, and I think it’s more in the spirit of what Giving Tuesday is all about.

Jeanette: Yes, absolutely. Something you mentioned, Savanah, had me think about not just giving dollars, which Allison also alluded to earlier, but there could be an educational component where people still don’t know about Giving Tuesday as much as the nonprofit world where we do know about it and hear about it. So starting that communication early could help your supporters who don’t know about Giving Tuesday understand what it is.

Going back to giving not needing to be dollar specific, you could say, “It’s Giving Tuesday. Please give us your feedback.” There could be a lot of different ways that you could ask for engagement and have that be a goal. You could get a lot of feedback and get maybe 100 responses instead of maybe like 10 donations. So determine what’s valuable and have that discussion internally.

The other thing I’ll mention for best practices, as we mentioned earlier, is just to get really creative and think outside the box. Think things like getting feedback or even maybe giving your audience something specific. 

Let’s say you are a mental health organization, and you create resources for your clients. Maybe you put out a meditation that day and say, “We’re giving you something,” without asking for anything in return. The more you thank people in advance, get the word out in advance, and be creative to not only think about giving in the sense that you’re getting something but giving to your community, you can build relationships. But that’s all going to depend on current relationships, what you’re doing, and what your focus is, so we definitely recommend having internal discussions starting now leading up to Giving Tuesday as opposed to, like Savanah was saying, doing it the day of. Because that tends to yield little results, and you usually stress yourself out, too. 

7. Can you give examples of successful Giving Tuesday campaigns?

Savanah: I do. One of my favorite places to look for successful or very fun Giving Tuesday campaigns is Givebutter. They do a really great job of celebrating awesome campaigns, either because of their creativity or because they reach an incredible goal. So, I found three that I really thought were awesome.

[shares screen]

One of them is "Fill the World with Arts for Life," and they did a Giving Tuesday mural that people collaborated on, which I thought was a really cool element. It's a virtual way of celebrating Giving Tuesday, but it does connect to both their mission and also gave their community an opportunity to participate in a way other than just donating. So, I thought this was a really fun one.

This other one I love is from Prospector Theater. They made their $7,000 goal around their 7th birthday, so I think that's a really cool way to have a dollar amount goal but have it be meaningful more than just being that dollar amount. They surpassed their goal, reaching 131% of their goal. That's really exciting for them, and they did a really good job of engaging with their community and using the peer-to-peer aspect of Givebutter to make their campaign successful.

The final one is an example of a campaign that reached its goal, and they started fundraising prior to Giving Tuesday. They had a really long runway, about a month before Giving Tuesday, they started promoting it. So, by the time Giving Tuesday arrived, there were already donations showing up, and I think that momentum really helped them go across the finish line and reach more than 100% of their goal. They did some full videos with music that they were sharing on their social platforms, showing different ways that the funds were going to support what they were doing. They also made it really community-oriented and had a bunch of supporters do peer-to-peer fundraising as well. Those are three that I thought were fun and creative and found a cool way to integrate their mission into a fun fundraising campaign.

Jeanette: Awesome, those are great examples. And the way you found those was probably just searching Givebutter for Giving Tuesday, right?

Savanah: Yeah, they actually do a contest every year where you can submit your campaign to them for various awards. So, if you go into their 2021 and 2022 entries, you can see all the ones that got awards. But you can also just search their entire database to find different campaigns. 

Their platform is really cool because they have auctions that you can run, events, peer-to-peer fundraising, so you get to see a lot of different types of fundraising campaigns for Giving Tuesday. You can also see ways that they're leveraging multiple tools. So, if you're looking for inspiration, I highly recommend checking out Givebutter. Another place you can look is GoFundMe, but Givebutter is really focused on nonprofits. So, I recommend checking there first.

Jeanette: Awesome. We'll make sure to put those specific links to share in the description. That gives you an idea of how you can look for them on your own, depending on what field or industry you're in. We did a YouTube video on successful Giving Tuesday campaigns in 2018 or 2019; I'll link that in the description. It's always worthwhile to check out what the big nonprofits are doing or have done in the past as well. That might give you inspiration. They usually have big marketing budgets and teams, so you could kind of take a look and see what's feasible to maybe copy with your own messaging and twists on it versus having to start things from scratch. We'll also have some resources in the Nonprofit Marketing Academy so that those can help you as well.

8. How can I find a corporate partner for Giving Tuesday?

Jeanette: So, on one of those examples Savanah shared, there was actually a match, a $40,000 match. I think it was the last one with the school program that she was showing. And that's an example of having a corporate partner. It could have actually been a donor who was an individual, but something along those lines is [a corporate partner] you could find to help match your goal.

What you want to do is start with any corporate partners you're currently engaged with. So, if you have a connection, find out what's going to be a good partnership for them. You can say, "Hey, we want to include you in our Giving Tuesday campaign. Would you be willing to do a match? We'll include you in all of our collateral material, whether that's email, social media posts, etc.” Or maybe they're already planning to give to your organization at the end of the year. You could leverage that and say, "Hey, why don't we collaborate for Giving Tuesday so that people feel like their donation is doubled, their impact is doubled, as opposed to just giving at the end of the year?” It's a much more collaborative opportunity. But that's going to depend on relationships you already have.

Perhaps there is a local coffee shop or business that you interact with a lot or have a relationship with. What you could do is ask them to donate a portion of their sales to your nonprofit on Giving Tuesday. That could be a great way for them to get involved in Giving Tuesday even though they're not a nonprofit. If it's a local coffee shop, they could say, "Anyone who comes in on Giving Tuesday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., we're donating 10% to X nonprofit." Those are just a couple of creative ideas. It never hurts to ask.

Give yourself a little bit of a runway, figure out what your goal is, start communicating early so you can tell that corporate partner potentially how they're going to be marketed by you to promote whatever your collaboration is. That's going to give you a better chance at success..

9. What are the best technology tools for Giving Tuesday?

Savanah: Well, for free fundraising tools, if your organization is approved to do Facebook or meta fundraising, you can use Facebook and Instagram to collect donations. If you want to do a more social-based campaign, GoFundMe is another popular option. 

If you're looking for tools that are more nonprofit-focused, Givebutter or Donorbox are really popular. Donorbox is one that people really like if you're more of an international organization, but Givebutter is also a really great option, and their tools are free. They have a lot of resources available to you as well as an email messaging program that is also free, so I highly recommend checking them out.

On the analytics side, using any of the Google products or Meta Business to track what's going on with your social promotion and your website is really key. 

On the design side, there’s Canva, which has a free option for nonprofits, and DesignStripe, which is a new AI tool that lets you create social content. And then Pixels also has a free folder of images you can use for Giving Tuesday.

On the copywriting side, Grammarly is a really helpful tool. And then Chat GPT could help you do some brainstorming. 

For community engagement, you can always check out some social streaming platforms, whether it's Facebook Live or Instagram Live or Twitch. And then Zoom is also a really great tool if you want to connect with your community on the day of Giving Tuesday or prior to Giving Tuesday to get the message out or talk about what you're doing with your organization.

So, those are some of the ones I would recommend, but we'll include a full list with this. 

Jeanette: Yeah, and it might seem like a lot. We're giving you guys a lot of information, so it's kind of just pick and choose what you need. Some of you who are going to be a little more advanced might want to use something like ChatGPT to help create your messaging, and some of you might say, "I don't even know what that is yet." So, we're just trying to get all the resources, all the information, but we'll streamline that in the description.

Of course, here's the cleaned-up transcription following the same format:

10. How can I engage donors after Giving Tuesday?

Allison: I think one of the most important things is ensuring that you're finding some kind of way to collect emails or other contact information from your donors so that way you can keep in contact with them after the fact and keep them within your pipeline as a donor to donate more in the future or to stay connected to your organization.

But by far, I think the most important thing to do is to make sure that you say thank you and share how that money will be used, like the impact that they made by making their donation. The more personalized you can make that thank you, the better. That could just be changing the language of an email, but if you have the bandwidth to send personal notes or make phone calls, that's even better. 

I know a lot of organizations don’t have that much bandwidth at the end of the year, so just changing the language a little bit depending on the group of donors could be potentially enough. But if someone gave a really big donation, then definitely do some kind of special reach-out because you definitely want to retain them for the future.

Also consider, whenever you send your thank you, inviting them to follow you on social media (if they're not already) or sharing other ways that they can engage besides donations. If you have some kind of event going on, you could invite them. Or you could invite them to learn more about your organization, especially if it's a new donor. Those are great ways to help to keep them kind of in-the-know about your organization and what you have going on.

You can also use this as an opportunity to lead into your end-of-year campaign. But don't right away make another ask—they already just gave to you, and a thank you should be enough at this point. But keep them in the loop for down the line, and in a few more weeks, let them know what's going on for your end-of-year campaign, whether that's asking for another donation from them or encouraging them to share what's going on with their friends in their network.

Jeanette: Awesome. One thing you could also do is ask why they donated this Giving Tuesday and put that into your storytelling or to gather information that's going to help you appeal to more people like that donor or those donors. 

Having conversations with people is always also encouraged, and by having a conversation with them, you might learn that they want to be more involved and have more to give in a year-end campaign and want to figure out how to do that with you. So, the more personal (like Allison is saying) you can get, whether it's getting on the phone with someone or sending a direct email to them, while it's great to have a generic email that goes out to talk about the success or the impacts that were able to happen because of the donations on that day, it's even more compelling if there is a one-to-one communication that you can put out to people who take action and invest in you. 

11. How to manage your day on Giving Tuesday to avoid burnout?

Savanah: I would first set some times to engage on social platforms or through your community, or however you're talking to your donors. And then set times not to engage to give yourself a breather. 

Schedule your posts and emails ahead of time. If you're not able to schedule emails in your current platform, at least have your emails drafted and ready to go so that way you can just hit send when they need to be sent out.

And then, like I mentioned earlier, definitely celebrate your wins. If you are seeing success or you reach a stretch goal, make sure that you are celebrating that moment and enjoying that moment because your hard work helped to make that happen. And that is going to make it a much more enjoyable Giving Tuesday.

Jeanette: Definitely, and if you have a coffee maker, make sure the night before you set that up, ready to go, so it's one last thing to do the day up. 

Make sure you're taking care of yourself. And if, let's say, your Giving Tuesday campaign tanks and you don't get much activity, or you don't meet the goal that you had hoped for, know that that's okay, and you can learn from everything. The end-of-year giving for the whole month of December is still something you can refine. You can leverage the fact, like, "Hey, we were going for this goal on Giving Tuesday, we didn't meet it, but we still need help if you can help us by the end of the year." Most donations do come in that last week of December anyway, so make sure that you are planning, like Allison says, to leave a little bit of a gap, but you can jump right back into fundraising efforts so that you can get the dollars your organization needs to fulfill its mission.

And heartfelt storytelling always wins. If you are a nonprofit that ends up not meeting your goals, make sure you have maybe your founder or board members appeal by sharing some personal stories, and that usually really helps convert donors.

12. Any other things you want to share about Giving Tuesday?

Savanah: I had one last thing. It's kind of part of that avoiding burnout but also setting yourself up for success. I think when you work in marketing, you're aware that a lot of eyes are on you, and people have a lot of opinions about what you're doing and how you could be doing things better. 

Often, people just want to help, so create a place where people can share their feedback with you. Whether that's donor feedback, board member feedback, feedback from your co-workers or your teams, make sure you have a place for that, so that you're not having to field those questions or deal with that feedback while you're in the midst of something that really needs your attention. Creating an opportunity for people to share is a really great way to make sure that you are not overwhelmed by the feedback you're getting, and you don't feel like you need to scramble to find solutions in that time because there will always be a time to address that and implement those changes if they are really good suggestions that are going to help you be successful in the future.