Last year more than $36.1M was donated online in the 24 hours of Giving Tuesday.
Those dollars weren’t raised by those who started planning the week or even the month before. An integrated, mission-driven campaign takes a minimum of three months of planning – and we want this roadmap and the series of emails following it to help you do it!
While you’re reading this, if you’re thinking “I don’t have the time or resources to do that!” please give us a call, we have solutions for very organization’s size and budget.
Set Your Goal
Your Giving Tuesday Campaign should be an expansion or a complement to your annual giving targets. If you’re focused on cash gifts, set a target based on your organization’s success with previous digital-driven cash fundraising. If you’re looking to increase your monthly giving program, set your target there. By creating a measurable, data-driven target you can ensure your creative, messaging, and team are all centered on achieving one clear goal.
Your Giving Tuesday ask doesn’t need to be limited to a classic donation, get creative with inspiring volunteers or promoting legacy giving. Giving Tuesday should help donors support you in whatever way makes the most impact.
Set Your Campaign Brand
Your campaign creative and messaging should all have a consistent look and feel. Each item should be seen as one in a series, each complementing each other and building off the same storyboard.
Here are our recommendations for building your campaign brand:
- 3 – 5 key campaign messages: What is the core mission of your campaign? (e.g. 50 new monthly donors will allow our organization to provide 100 children with vaccinations) What are three stories you can share with your donors to support this mission?
- 3 – 5 key campaign images: Who is at the center of the stories you have defined? Is it your staff, your beneficiaries, or even your donors? Your images should be story and people-driven – put away the stock images!
Design Channel Specific Scheduling
In my opinion, there are two key differences between good and great digital fundraising campaigns:
- Taking the time to plan and create your content based on the channel most used by your donors. If your donors live on YouTube, invest your time in creating mission-driven videos that tell your campaign story. I wouldn’t recommend forgetting the other channels altogether, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to build new relationships but use your resources deliberately.
- Scheduling well in advance. Whether you’re on Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, Canva, or Sendible – there are so many incredible tools available to ensure that the vast majority of your digital campaign is scheduled well in advance. Not only does this give you the freedom to create and schedule under less time pressure, but it frees up your time to focus on engagement. Interacting with your donors should be your primary task while the campaign is live, reposting their content, asking for shares, and answering comments.
Assemble and Resource your Team
You don’t have to do this alone! Whether you’re a single-team fundraiser, a digital marketing team of 10, or if you have outsourced to a team of pros (like FD!) you need to look at your wider team to ensure maximum engagement. A sample of people you can resource to share your campaign message includes:
- Board Members
- Programs Staff
- Volunteers
- Interns
- Community or Industry Leaders
- Your Parents
By providing these individuals with a toolkit including your key messages and images you can ensure organic uptake of your campaign from the very start.