How to make the most of Giving Tuesday?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Blackbaud, the leading provider of software for powering social impact, and Almabase, the digital-first alumni engagement solution, have announced the expansion of their partnership to the education sectors of Canada and the United Kingdom. The partnership will provide institutions with a modern, digital-first solution to improve constituent data, drive self-serve engagement, and boost event participation.
A Unified Vision
The partnership aligns with Blackbaud’s commitment to customer-centric innovation across digital engagement, Advancement CRM, and financials.
“Partners bring integrated capabilities that extend capabilities and outcomes for Blackbaud customers. We are thrilled that Almabase’s offering, integrated with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and leveraging Blackbaud’s best-in-class payment solution, Blackbaud Merchant Services™, is now available to even more of our customers around the world.”
- Liz Price, Sr. Director of Global Partners at Blackbaud
