By: Keisha Hartman

Over the past few years, Giving Days have started to make a prominent name in annual fundraising efforts for many organizations thanks to the power of social media and peer-to-peer fundraising tools. Giving Days are an exciting way to engage new donors and enrich the supporter experience. Thinking of launching your own giving day for your nonprofit? Want to build upon your existing strategy? Here are our 5 tips to amplify your Giving Day:

1. Focus on One Need

Part of what makes Giving Days so successful is how it rallys your community for 24 hours to reach one goal. This exclusivity creates a sense of urgency – so focusing on one theme helps your organization build all your communication collateral around this one cause.

2. Ramp up Social Media

Giving Day campaigns rely on donor networks and social sharing to spread the word and help motivate constituents to get involved. Update your social media cover photos, create an event on Facebook, and use appropriate hashtags to get the word out.

Pro tip: provide your fundraisers with social media assets to share, such as Instagram story templates, sample social media posts, and “I donated” images.

3. Use Matching Gifts for Challenges

Allot time to secure matching gifts to be used as part of your strategy. To find matching gifts consider asking a major donor who recently gave and use their donation as part of the campaign match. You can also create a separate sponsorship packet specific to this campaign to solicit corporate participation.

Once you’ve secured matching gifts, build it into your outreach plan. If you’ve secured enough matching gifts you can create multiple challenges such as “Help us unlock $10,000 of matching gifts if you donate by 12pm ET!” and then reserve another $10,000 later for “Just in! Thanks to another generous donor, all gifts made in the next hour will be matched!”

4. Create a Day of Event Plan

Giving Days aren’t a “set it and forget it” campaign. It takes dedicated staff to create hype throughout the day. Consider some of the following ideas to help create a fun community environment:

• Go live on social media or your peer-to-peer platform to kick off the day
• Continue to update your fundraising progress throughout the day
• Partner with local radio stations to help raise awareness
• Ask for a social media handle on the donation form so you can shoutout donors
• Recruit social media ambassadors ahead of the day to create even more reach and excitement

5. Don’t Forget the Follow-up

A thank-you email can go a long way. Be sure to include an additional campaign update to your donors (whether you met your goal or not) and provide the impact their donation made. Giving Days often produce many new donors so this would be a good time to review your welcome series to cultivate those constituents.

Pro tip: use thank you video software like ThankView or Gratavid to really wow your donors.

Whether it is for this coming Giving Tuesday or a new Giving Day initiative we hope these tips will help take your campaign to the next level. Need any help with your upcoming Giving Day or other digital fundraising strategies?

Let’s chat!