GivingTuesday is Coming. . .

This year, GivingTuesday is November 29. Are you ready? If not, let’s think about how to get you ready.

Overview

Okay actually, I assume you know what GivingTuesday is, but let’s do a quick overview. Created in 2012, GivingTuesday is about radical generosity and is a global movement that continues to grow. It’s a day to stop and inspire people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.

This blog is going up in early November, so I hate to say, but if my blog post was your reminder, some would say you’re late. (Don’t listen; personally, I do my best work under pressure.)

Planning Tips

Not a time to grow, but nurture

GivingTuesday is really an opportunity to execute “nurture messaging” or cause marketing. Throughout a nurture campaign, you keep building your audience, but your focus is to prepare them for a certain endpoint, building anticipation toward a moment of engagement. With nurture messaging, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind as you plan:

• Growing awareness and articulating the need
  • With GivingTuesday, you have the entire length of your campaign to illustrate the need – don’t squander this.
• Defining the organization and who it serves
  • Don’t let the word nurture distract you – during the giving campaign, you need to share data about the organization and the people it hopes to impact. Soft-touch messaging works best after you presented organizational metrics and data.
• Sharing identified strategies to solve the need
  • This is a giving campaign, so what are contributions intended to do? Don’t leave your audience guessing. Be clear about how their generosity will be used.

Using this approach, the hope is that by GivingTuesday, your audience is clear and giving of themselves is easy.

But also, a note: hearts over heads.

People give with hearts NOT their heads

Please remember it’s not Fundraising Tuesday – it’s GivingTuesday.

• Meet people where they are
  • People will give how they want, not how you want them to, so don’t just ask for monetary donations. During the course of your campaign, you may have involved dollar amounts, but if someone has a skill or resources, they may feel more moved to help and get involved by contributing their time and expertise. Don’t let those opportunities slip by.
  • Convert people from transaction to transformation. Offer alternative ways to get involved and engaged. Make sure people don’t just feel like end-of-the-year ATMs.

Simple prep

I truly mean this: it’s not too late to get ready. Any work you do now can help create a foundation to build on in subsequent years. Here are a few things you can do now that will help you beyond your GivingTuesday campaign:

• List hygiene
  • Subscriber numbers
  • Percentage regularly engaged
  • Content that resonates – based on open rates and click-throughs
• Define success
  • Is this a KPI tied to money, engaged, sign-ups, etc.?
• Flow processes
  • How easy is it to sign up and get involved on your current website? Users shouldn’t have to use more than three clicks to complete donations. Do some basic UX maintenance now – don’t let technology be a barrier to giving.

Final Thoughts

• GivingTuesday isn’t a competition, all tides lift all boats. This is great time to collaborate! Give others the content to speak about you and share your message.
• This is a storytelling holiday.

GivingTuesday is one of three days people are primed to give – those other days are December 30 and 31. Use it as an opportunity to extend the campaign and come back to impact numbers.