6 Great Giving Tuesday Platforms for Schools & Universities (2026)

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With the overwhelming success that Giving Tuesdays have shown to have brought to schools and universities across the globe, it is time we started talking about how to make the most of your Giving Tuesday.

Giving Tuesday, widely recognized as an annual day of giving, is a great opportunity for your school or university to engage with potential donors and raise funds. 

With Giving Tuesday 2021 just around the corner, here’s our checklist to help you plan an awesome Giving Tuesday. 

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Plan ahead & set clear goals

1. Choose your core team, define responsibilities, and have regular meetings to plan and track execution

2. Set a defined structure, target audience, and actionable goals while creating the plan

3. Finalize the budget

4. Identify and begin to solicit prospective donors and other sponsors

5. Create a branded donation page to showcase your school spirit. Data shows that donors are much more comfortable to donate on a donation page that looks like yours than to an unbranded Venmo or Paypal page.

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Build a compelling campaign theme

1. A unique and compelling theme helps your donors connect better and acts as an incentive for them to donate to a cause that they believe in. One of our customers, Don Bosco Prep High School raised more than $25K, asking its alumni to donate towards the specific cause of building a Wellness Center for its students. 

2. Build all of your communication collateral about the Giving Day around it

3. Create a unique hashtag to help spread the word about your Giving Day further and faster on social media.

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Mobilize your ambassadors

1. Bring your ambassadors on board to promote your Giving Day and take ownership or share your team’s responsibilities

2. Solicit personal appeals from influential people of your school like teachers, famous alumni, board members, etc. further inspiring donors to donate

3. Spread the word about your Giving Day extensively amongst your faculty and staff inclusive of board members, class representatives, and chapter admins

Ensure a smooth giving experience

1. With recent trends suggesting that an increasing number of donations are being made from mobile devices, ensure that your platform is mobile compatible

2. Enable peer-to-peer solicitation for your donors to reach out to their network

3. Display challenges and leaderboards to help donors get a sense of their contribution and encourage more participation through healthy competition

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Leverage social media marketing

1. Create a detailed communication plan and calendar much ahead of your Giving Tuesday

2. Build a social media toolkit to help your team and ambassadors promote your Giving Tuesday campaign

3. Use Facebook or Instagram Live scheduling to actively engage with your donors and share with them live updates on the day itself to influence bigger contributions.

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Leverage different content formats & multiple channels

1. You don’t have to necessarily stick to one format or channel. Experiment with multiple formats such as images, videos, or long-form captions.

2. Videos can help a great deal in the promotion of your Giving Tuesday campaign and encourage donors. Just a short video created with a smartphone can create a more personalized approach aimed at your donors. Try to involve the head of school or faculty in creating these videos.

3. Utilize offline channels to promote your campaign. Publishing updates in your print newsletter and distributing flyers in local coffee shops are some of the techniques you can try to publicize your campaign offline.

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Thank all those who contributed

Sending a simple and short thank you email to your donors at the end of the day is a great practice to let them know how thankful you are for their contribution. Ensure that this note doesn’t ask for another donation and instead, only is a means of expressing gratitude. The thank-you gesture has shown to have increased the chances of the same donors contributing again.

Giving Tuesday has become a global movement that celebrates and supports giving and philanthropy with events throughout the year.

We wish your team make it BIG and make the best of this Giving Tuesday.

Need more pointers on planning your Giving Day?
Check out our Comprehensive Guide on Planning A Giving Day for Schools & Universities.

If you work in higher-education, you’re probably ramping up for Giving Tuesday, but if your organization is not already doing that, you better get started. If you’ve never heard of this day that’s filled with philanthropic spirit, no worries! Giving Tuesday, a day devoted to charitable giving, marks the beginning of the year-end giving season. It falls on the Tuesday directly after Thanksgiving and is one of the most highly-anticipated days of giving across the world.

This day alone brings in millions of dollars for higher education institutions, so it’s important to leverage it in your fundraising strategy. Specifically, the higher ed market stands to gain substantial sums of money from alumni and other major givers on this day.

This year, Giving Tuesday is in December, but it’s never too early to start prepping! To ensure your institution or organization reaches its maximum Giving Tuesday potential, do the following:

1. Create a reasonable timeline

2. Set aspirational goals

3. Communicate before, during, and after

4. Enable multiple donation platforms

5. Inquire about matching gifts

6. Rely on volunteer fundraisers

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If you need a refresher on why the giving season is so important, visit this end-of-year fundraising guide.

Ready to have the best giving season ever? Let’s get started!

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1. Create a Reasonable Timeline

As with any fundraising endeavor, your institution can’t wait until the last minute to plan. Otherwise, you’ll wind up with a chaotic mess that doesn’t come anywhere close to its potential.

While it may just be one day of the year, it’s the most important day of the year for fundraising. So treat it as such. Crafting your Giving Tuesday plan requires a lot of careful planning and communication.

Specifically, you’ll need to engage two main groups of people before the big day: your employees and your supporters (both current and potential). Before you can even conduct outreach, your team needs to be on the same page. That means fully planning your campaign by doing the following:‍

- Setting goals and timelines. Remember, this day kicks off end-of-year giving. Span your timeline over the course of giving season, with the biggest goals set on Giving Tuesday. Read on to learn about the types of goals you should set.‍

- Planning your outreach strategy. Before contacting any prospects, you should plan your strategy. This means planning your posts, emails, and so on and determining what they’ll say. For posts after Giving Tuesday, plan outlines for different types of end results. For instance, you should outline separate posts for meeting your goals, not quite reaching your goals, and exceeding your goals.

When you plan ahead and consider multiple campaign outcomes, you set your institution up for fundraising success!

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2. Communicate goals with your team

Your Giving Tuesday ideas (get inspiration here!) might be more creative than any other campaign you’ve ever created, but creativity means nothing without communicated goals. You need to make sure that your entire team is on the same page so that everyone is working towards the same overarching goal. 

There are a number of goals you can set. For instance, your institution may set the following goals:

1. Financial goals

2. Total number of donors

3. Number of recurring donors

4. Number of new donors

5. Percentage of participating alumni

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While these goals can be measured via metrics, there are others that don’t rely on numbers. While you should implement measurable goals, consider making qualitative objectives, too. For instance, maybe you want to provide donors with opportunities to actively engage with you. Perhaps you want to simply spread the word about your higher education organization. Regardless of the goals you choose, they should be aspirational but still attainable. That way, you don’t sell yourself short, but you don’t create goals that are impossible to reach, either.

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3. Communicate before, during, and after

As you’ve learned, before even launching your campaign, you should communicate the goals and explain the fundraising strategies to your team. Once the campaign is fully planned, your employees will need to conduct outreach to both current and potential supporters. Outreach should continue throughout the entire campaign. Throughout your campaign, keep both your staff and supporters updated on the progress. That way, they know when they need to step up their efforts to reach your goals.‍

Remember, whatever goals you choose, your employees need to be on the same page. That means continuous communication. Otherwise, neither your employees nor your donors will have a solid understanding of what they’re trying to achieve. Then, once your campaign wraps up, thank your donors personally via email, so they feel valued. Additionally, use social media to announce the end totals in relation to your goal.

Your campaign isn’t over until you announce your end totals. Since the giving season continues over the course of the next several months, you shouldn’t wrap up quite yet. Instead, you should post an update once Giving Tuesday ends and say where your organization stands in relation to its total goal for the rest of the giving season.

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4. Enable multiple donation platforms

Planning, communication, and aspirational goals mean nothing if your donors don’t have a way to give! To ensure that your college or university receives the most funds possible on Giving Tuesday, you’ll need to enable multiple donation platforms. You likely already have the basics set up, like an online donation page or direct mail giving. However, if you don’t enable other ways to give, you won’t make as much revenue as you possibly can.

To start, look at the types of donations you allow. In other words, don’t just allow credit and debit card donations. Allow cash donations, check donations, donor-advised fund gifts, foundation giving, and so on. Also, for those who have the affinity to give but not the capacity, provide volunteer opportunities for events. By encouraging the philanthropic spirit, you let them know their efforts are recognized. Then, if they ever acquire the funds to donate, they’ll be more likely to give! Text-to-give is also on the rise. Get creative with your ways to give. Don’t limit your donors! Multiple donation platforms shouldn’t exist only on Giving Tuesday. Rather, you should enable several platforms year-round to accommodate all donors. That way, you boost your fundraising potential!

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5. Inquire about matching gifts

If you’re not already aware, corporate philanthropy has changed the fundraising game for all players in the nonprofit world. When an employee of a company with a matching gift program donates, the employer then matches that donation, so long as the donation meets the company’s criteria. In other words, eligible contributions might be doubled, or maybe even tripled depending on the program guidelines! Some major companies will even match the donations that your volunteers raise from their friends and family on your behalf! It’s all about locating those opportunities, so you don’t miss out on any revenue opportunities.

A good way to start the conversation about matching gifts is to create a dedicated matching gift page on your website. You can also add information about corporate giving on your Ways to Give page. From here, start devoting time to making matching gift appeals, such as direct mail, emails, social media posts, and so on. When valuable supporters learn their donations can be multiplied without reaching back into their own pockets, they’ll likely take an extra five minutes to fill out the necessary forms. As a higher education institution with a substantial donor base, you are undoubtedly missing out on major revenue opportunities. However, if you leverage dedicated software, you can pinpoint all of your matching gift opportunities.

Remember, Giving Tuesday produces substantial amounts of revenue for colleges and universities, so if you can multiply your donations through matching gifts, do it.

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6. Rely on volunteer fundraisers

Just like corporate philanthropy, peer-to-peer fundraising is on the rise, too! Giving Tuesday is the perfect opportunity to reach out to your supporters to raise money on your behalf. Since your institution likely has more donors than the average organization, you stand to gain major revenue from volunteer fundraising.

If you’re unfamiliar with peer-to-peer fundraising, here’s how they typically work:

1. Your fundraising team sets goals and timelines like any other campaign

2. You choose a peer-to-peer fundraising platform

3. Your team recruits and trains your volunteers

4. Participants create personalized pages where they’ll fundraise for you

5. Volunteers share their pages and encourage friends and family to donate

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Volunteer fundraising ensures that you’re reaching the widest possible audience. Instead of only reaching your current supporters, you’ll reach supporters’ friends and family, too! To kick off your peer-to-peer research, check out these six proven peer-to-peer fundraising strategies that bring success. 

Plus, you can incentivize participants to raise more with gamification tools. Gamification can mean anything from leaderboards to badges to fundraising thermometers.  Leaderboards show your participants those who have earned the most, and badges show up on participants’ profiles when they reach certain milestones. On the other hand, fundraising thermometers show overall financial progress toward your goal. There are several peer-to-peer fundraising platforms and tools on the market. Choose the ones that best align with your institution and its goals. That way, you enable your volunteer fundraisers to do the best campaigning possible!

The whole point of Giving Tuesday is to boost funds, but your institution can experience a number of other benefits, such as new donor acquisition and alumni engagement. The point is, the giving season represents a major opportunity for every organization in the nonprofit sector, including major schools. Remember, fully plan your campaign, set aspirational goals, and communicate effectively throughout the entire giving season. You should have multiple ways of giving, look for matching gift opportunities, and rely on your volunteers year-round. However, these strategies are especially important on Giving Tuesday. As always, remember to thank your supporters. Now, get out there, and plan for your institution’s best giving season ever!

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About the author:

Adam Weinger is the President of Double the Donation, the leading provider of matching gift tools to nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. Adam created Double the Donation in order to help nonprofits increase their annual revenue through corporate matching gift and volunteer grant programs.

Many educational institutions rely on well-run Giving Days as a significant component of their annual fundraising strategies. After all, these fundraising campaigns can be an excellent opportunity for all sorts of donors⁠—including current students, families, alumni, and community members⁠—to support your ongoing efforts.

With so much riding on an annual Giving Day, however, it’s important that you go into your campaign with a detailed fundraising plan and some tips for success in your pocket. This will enable you to maximize revenue while better engaging with your donors.

And luckily, if you’re looking for new ways to elevate your upcoming Giving Day, this is the guide for you! We’ll walk through these tried-and-true best practices:

1. Provide multiple ways to give to the campaign.
2. Empower supporters with peer-to-peer fundraising.
3. Inform and remind donors about matching gift opportunities.
4. Target alumni supporters in your fundraising appeals.
5. Promote your Giving Day fundraiser online.
6. Motivate donors with gamification strategies.
7. Follow up with Giving Day donors post-campaign.
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Ready to get started? Let’s dive in with our first Giving Day fundraising tip.

1. Provide multiple ways to give to the campaign.

One of the best things you can do to increase participation in your Giving Day is to diversify the ways in which donors can give. At the very least, this should include:

• Online donation forms
• Text-to-give
• Direct mail

You might even want to consider non-traditional support methods such as event contributions, volunteer hours, in-kind gifts, gifts of securities, cryptocurrency donations, and more.

Everyone has their unique preferences when it comes to donating charitably. The bottom line is that the more ways an individual can participate in your Giving Day campaign, the higher response rates you’re likely to see.

2. Empower supporters with peer-to-peer fundraising.

Peer-to-peer giving is a top fundraising strategy for all sorts of organizations⁠—higher education included. And it can be a particularly great way to elevate an institution’s Giving Day.

After all, peer-to-peer fundraising empowers individual supporters or groups to raise money on behalf of your institution. These volunteer fundraisers are then able to solicit donations for the campaign from their own family members, friends, colleagues, and other community members.

Thus, it offers a powerful opportunity to get in touch with new first-time donors and raise awareness for your cause.

3. Inform and remind donors about matching gift opportunities.

Corporate matching gifts offer one of the simplest and most effective ways to elevate your institution’s Giving Day results⁠—all without asking donors to give more. In fact, by combining matching gifts with your school’s fundraising efforts, you can easily double financial contributions, see significantly elevated donation impact, and better engage with your donors.

More than likely, a solid portion of existing and prospective donors to your cause work for companies with employee matching gift programs. Unfortunately, many of these individuals have likely never been made aware of the opportunity. When you integrate matching gifts into your Giving Day strategy, however, you can inform donors about matching gifts, collect employment information to identify match-eligible gifts, follow up post-donation to guide supporters through the process, and see more matches driven to completion.

4. Target alumni supporters in your fundraising appeals.

For many school fundraisers, the institution’s alumni are some of the most prominent supporters. As your next Giving Day approaches, taking the time to target this segment of your donor base can be a great way to go⁠—keeping in mind that the more you know about your alumni supporters, the better you can adjust your fundraising efforts in their favor.

For example, did an individual graduate with a degree in biology? Consider sending a donation appeal to support the expansion of your institution’s science lab and research department. Did they participate in your school of interior design? Request a donation for a program supply fund for students in need!

The better the alumni donor can relate to the fundraising appeal, the more likely they are to contribute to your Giving Day.

5. Promote your Giving Day fundraiser online.

More and more institutions are beginning to understand the vast power and potential of online fundraising⁠—and promoting their fundraising efforts online. In today’s day and age, it’s one of the most effective ways to spread the word about an upcoming campaign and solicit donations from supporters. And that’s exactly why it’s such a crucial strategy for upcoming Giving Days!

But how exactly can you leverage the influence of the internet to best promote your Giving Day fundraiser? We recommend:

• Creating a hub of Giving Day information on your website
• Sharing Giving Day fundraising materials on social media
• Encouraging supporters to interact with and share your online content

Your institution’s website is likely one of your most valuable marketing assets. But the vitality of the internet doesn’t just stop there⁠—increasing online presence can involve social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. From these platforms, you can share Giving Day materials (including an overview of ways to get involved) and incorporate links back to additional content on your main website.

6. Motivate donors with gamification strategies.

Gamification, or the act of applying elements typically associated with gameplay (such as winning and losing, point-scoring, and more), can be one of the most effective ways to elevate fundraising participation among donors and prospects.

Here are a few of our favorite ideas:

• Goals and goal-tracking ⁠— Set specific, tangible, and realistic goals (for example, the number of donations or total fundraising revenue collected).
• Leaderboards ⁠— Publicly recognize recent and high-level donors with an online leaderboard that updates in real time.
• Incentives and rewards ⁠— Motivate donors (and volunteer fundraisers if you go the peer-to-peer route) by offering incentives to give and collect donations. This can be as simple as a digital “badge” gifted to those who have given or collected the most dollars.

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The idea of fundraising gamification leverages a sense of healthy, friendly competition in order to drive engagement. Plus, it can be a particularly smart strategy when it comes to time-based campaigns⁠—like Giving Days⁠—that already depend heavily on urgency as a motivating factor for giving.

7. Follow up with Giving Day donors post-campaign.

Ideally, the donor journey doesn’t end once an individual submits their donation. This is especially true when it comes to significant campaigns⁠—such as your institution’s Giving Day.

Instead, it’s important to follow up with your supporters after they give. This can include:

• Thanksgiving Day contributors for their support (e.g., “Thank for your generous donation of $1,000 to our school’s annual Giving Day.”)
• Sharing success stories and fundraising totals (e.g., “We raised more than $516,982 in a 24-hour period, due largely to donors like you! With this funding, we’re able to expand our research and improve upon student programming.”)
• Reminding donors about matching gift potential (e.g., “Did you know that your gift is likely eligible for a corporate match through your employer, the Home Depot? Click here to submit your online donation match request.”)

Strategic follow-ups such as these will enable your team to further engage with its supporters. When done effectively, it will even leave a positive lasting impression of your cause, encouraging donors to give again in the future.

Giving Days have huge potential to raise a ton of support for educational institutions and other types of nonprofit causes. By simplifying the giving process, increasing your reach with peer-to-peer efforts, highlighting matching gift opportunities, strategically targeting alumni donors, utilizing online promotional tools, and gamifying your campaign to engage supporters, you’ll be all set to see elevated Giving Day success.

Then, remember to follow up with campaign participants afterward to show your appreciation, communicate impact, and keep your institution at the forefront of their minds. You won’t regret it!