By Edgar Rodriguez

Is Giving Tuesday a waste of time? Good question, right?

First of all, the data says it’s been hugely successful in the past. Over 15,000 nonprofits participated last year, raising over $45 million.

Yes, some nonprofits probably raised very little money. But Giving Tuesday is NOT just a 24-hour fundraising campaign. It’s a movement that your supporters are embracing, more and more each year.

How did your nonprofit do last year?

If you participated in Giving Tuesday before, you can look at several metrics to judge your past success.

Depending on your goals, you can look at:

• Total donations ($)
• Number of new donors acquired
• Number of current donors who gave
• Number of new emails acquired
• Number of people who engaged with campaign (clicks, conversions, shares)
• Engagement with follow up messages (email, social, etc)
• You get the idea

So should you participate? I asked a few peers this exact question:

The comments I received are valuable recommendations and pearls of wisdom about Giving Tuesday, broken out into: CONS, PROS, PEARLS OF WISDOM.

Giving Tuesday CONS (WARNINGS)

Mary Cahalane

The one-off, or even one day a year, habit is bad for developing relationships between donors and organizations. If you can’t keep donors’ attention with good communications, a giving day isn’t likely to successfully fill that void, anyway.

I suspect strong organizations, with good fundraising programs already in place, could do well with Giving Tuesday as an addition. They’re ready with a strong message. They’ve got the staff to devote to that one day. And they’ve got systems in place to build on the relationships started with the one day.

Smaller organizations? Unless there’s a strong community-wide awareness of and participation in Giving Tuesday, I wouldn’t recommend putting a year-long program aside in order to participate. It’s a tool, and not every tool is right for every organization.

I’d ask:

• Do you have time for a bootcamp? What will get put aside while you’re doing it?
• What will the results of making that time be? Will they be lasting results?

Dennis Fischman

I wrote about ten reasons a nonprofit should not be on Facebook, and it all boiled down to what your nonprofit can and should do first. (https://dennisfischman.com/ten-reasons-your-nonprofit-should-not-be-on-facebook/)

I feel the same way about Giving Tuesday. IF you already take care of your donors as if they were your best friends, and you want to invite them to a party that you and other nonprofits are throwing, then great! But how many nonprofits are really showing the #donorlove that way?

Giving Tuesday PROS (CHEERLEADING)

PRO:

Caroline Avakian

I think one of the best parts of GivingTuesday are the collaborations and partnerships that are forged because of it. I was working at Trickle Up, a global poverty alleviation organization, when GivingTuesday started and we got to publish a few pieces in the Huffington Post based on HuffPo’s partnership with the GivingTuesday campaign and the NGO alliance group, InterAction. It gives smaller NGOs a chance to be a part of something bigger than them. We also forged partnerships with other orgs we were on GivingTuesday coordination calls with. It’s a win-win all around. @CarolineAvakian

Rob Wu

At CauseVox, we have seen the sheer growth of GivingTuesday as the motivating factor to nonprofits trying online fundraising for the first time. By taking part in GivingTuesday, nonprofits learn, in a very short amount of time, how to set impact-based fundraising goals, tell a compelling story, and use social media.

A few case studies from CauseXox:

• Movers & Shakers: National Domestic Violence Hotline’s GivingTuesday Campaign
• Project Renewal Raises Over $77,000 on Giving Tuesday
• Movers & Shakers: Danielle Festa of Grey2k

Kivi Leroux Miller

I was hired last year by a handful of community foundations to teach nonprofits basic communications planning and donor stewardship using both Giving Tuesday and Give Local America as hook. It’s a totally new concepts to at least 75% of orgs in training.

From the Nonprofit Marketing Guide: 5 Ways to Harness the Awesome Fundraising Potential of #GivingTuesday

Joe Waters

I think it’s great at getting nonprofits focused on building a real audience – an army! – and communicating with them via social media.

Pamela Grow

If they’re already focused on the right things, especially building a solid email list, go for it. I love what one of my subscribers did last year for Giving Tuesday.

Julia Campbell

GivingTuesday is a national day of giving and it gets a TON of media coverage. People search on the hashtag all day long. People that may never have made a donation online give for the first time on that day.

It is not something your org should overlook, or sneeze at! You may not raise millions, but you may get new eyeballs on your cause, new ambassadors to spread the word and best of all – new donors!

Buffy Beaudoin-Schwartz

GivingTuesday has grown such that nonprofits have an opportunity to embrace it, and leverage the day as part of a well-planned, overall yearly communications, outreach and development strategy.

Giving Tuesday: PEARLS OF WISDOM

Noland Hoshino

Giving Tuesday and other giving days force a nonprofit organization to sharpen and fine tune their message while competing with other organizations.

Most nonprofit organizations have campaigns that last days or months. Keeping donors attention for that long can be tiresome. A giving day campaign condenses your tactics to just 24-hours with immediate results.

Farra Trompeter

Giving Tuesday has grown in popularity, recognition, and success to a point where I don’t think nonprofits can afford to ignore it.

The challenge lies in figuring out how to plug it into the rest of your communications, especially if you are implementing a year-end appeal or annual fund campaign at the same time.

Rather than create a separate Giving Tuesday campaign, I think most orgs should integrate it into their overall calendar. If you are worried that it might take away from other efforts, consider testing a single channel ask–such as a 24-hour match promoted on Facebook or a selfie sharing campaign (giving voice over money) on Instagram.

If you are worried that asking for money on this day can hurt other efforts, ask for something else. Use Giving Tuesday to ask for time, passion, activism, and other efforts that might engage your donors beyond giving money.

Ehren Foss

A successful Giving Tuesday campaign depends on:

• How much the nonprofit has already adopted these kinds of tactics and technologies (how valuable is learning/training?)
• How well it aligns with their existing strategies and programs.
• How well they can segment and steward their constituents to make sure to ask the right constituents to join them in GivingTuesday in the right ways.

Practice working together as online communications, online fundraising, and major gifts teams. What happens if a major prospect gives to Giving Tuesday or comments on a post? Does your team know how to work together?

Mickey Gomez

Taking part in a broader effort can bring new attention to your nonprofit, whether through donations, education or simple awareness. The messaging around national, state or regional giving is also quite inspiring, and confirms the power of philanthropy by amplifying giving on a single day to maximize quantifiable impact.

Where the sector needs to focus, in my opinion, is on maintaining the momentum AND further developing ongoing communication strategies that respect how donors would like to receive information after taking part in such an initiative.

The Takeaway

Giving Tuesday, like any campaign, is much more successful if you do your homework.

If you’re community isn’t as engaged as you like, maybe Giving Tuesday can be a catalyst to build a stronger community. Success largely depends on how well you plan, your definition of successful participation, and what investment (and sacrifices) you’ll need to make.

Check out these related articles:

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Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, fundraising pros, marketers.

Guest post by Jim Belosic
CEO, Shortstack

Anyone who works for a nonprofit knows all too well about the donation scramble. This is why creating an impactful Facebook Page should be an integral part your marketing efforts is a no-brainer.

Facebook serves as a doorway to donors, allowing nonprofits to provide brief updates and news bites to constituents. It’s also a one-stop shop for photos, success stories, and calls to action, which reinforce the mission. Plus, Facebook is a favorite tool among nonprofits because of its low, low price of … free!

Using custom apps like ShortStack can help increase donations during fundraising campaigns. Check out these three ways that nonprofits can use Facebook apps to motivate donors.

Create a photo and video gallery

1When a nonprofit can establish emotional ties between its cause and its community, donations happen. One way to do this is to let pictures — photos and videos — tell the stories. With ShortStack, setting up an app with our video cascade template allows you to keep a permanent home for your nonprofit’s promo videos, special event video footage, news stories and commercials.

Share stories about the people who benefit from your work

Photo courtesy of Mike Grenville (Creative Commons)

2The people who benefit from your nonprofit’s efforts may have inspiring and moving stories to share. Facebook and Twitter offer a great venue for small pieces of inspiring status updates, but it’s easy to do even more with ShortStack’s Share Your Story template. Share Your Story engages users and raises awareness by making public the inspiring stories that drive your nonprofit to do the good work it does.

Use this template to run a contest or incentivize people to post their inspiring stories to your Facebook app. Once you have some contributions to your Share Your Story campaign, you can augment the impact by plucking inspiring quotes from these stories and posting them in your Timeline feed.

Give your constituents news right on your Facebook page

3Depending on their missions, nonprofits can be deeply affected by decisions made in Washington, DC.

For example, when researchers begin finding clues that may lead them to cures for diseases, when a group’s civil rights are in question or when budget issues affect a certain community, nonprofit administrators can share the news with their followers right on Facebook.

ShortStack offers a pre-made Blog/RSS template that keeps your donors privy to breaking news. If your nonprofit already has a blog, this template is also a great way to give it some more publicity.

These are three of the many ways that ShortStack can help nonprofits inspire and educate their donors, helping raise critical dollars that allow these organizations to continue doing the good work they do.

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New giving platform helps donors direct their dollars to high-impact nonprofits

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Guest post by Tamara Schweitzer
Social Impact Exchange

The giving season is upon us and it’s the time of year when many around the country are thinking about the greater social good and gearing up to make their charitable donations. With crowdfunding platforms and the opportunity to donate online through social media outlets, the act of giving to charities and discovering new causes has never been easier. But it’s not always easy to determine where those dollars can do the most good, or to truly know if those donations are having a real impact.

The Social Impact Exchange, a national membership association dedicated to building a capital marketplace to help scale high-impact social solutions, hopes to change that with the launch of the Social Impact 100 (S&I 100). The S&I 100 is the first-ever broad index of U.S. nonprofits working in the issue areas of education, youth, poverty and health that have evidence of results and are growing to serve more people in need.

One of the main goals in creating the index is to help nonprofits on the platform find the funds they need to continue growing, while also serving as a site that empowers donors to increase the impact of their charitable giving. Similar to the way the S&P 500 Index provides individual investors with the information they need to invest with confidence, the S&I 100 is an online resource that allows donors to access vital information about an organization’s current and future potential to make a difference.

How nonprofits make it into the index

Unlike other charity ratings websites and online giving platforms, the organizations included on the S&I 100 Index have been rigorously screened for evidence of impact through third-party verified studies and are only included on the index if the NPO has the ability to serve more people in need. In addition to the 100 organizations listed, the platform features nearly 16,000 local affiliates that are implementing their solutions.

All of the organizations that are part of the S&I 100 went through an application vetting process that the Exchange designed in collaboration with evaluation firms, ratings firms and other social sector leaders and experts. Along with access to individual evaluation studies, the S&I 100 also allows donors to view each organization’s plans for future growth, current and prior year budget and actuals, current locations, and major funders that are supporting them. When donors visit the site, they can search for organizations by issue area and by state, and they also have the option to give directly to the organization via its “donate now” button that links to the organization’s donation page.

Over time, we will expand the S&I 100 as we identify additional nonprofits that meet the criteria, and we will continue to collaborate with experts across the field to accommodate additional scaling initiatives and to help make the Index more accessible to donors. Ultimately, our hope is that by making it easier for donors to identify and give to high-impact organizations that are growing, we can begin to create the conditions for philanthropic giving to achieve major positive change. In building a marketplace that efficiently delivers capital to the most effective nonprofits, organizations can focus on doing the work they do best, and continue to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the country.

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