Whether you’ve been planning for months or have just now realized that GivingTuesday is on the horizon, we’ve rounded up a couple of guides and a few articles that you’ll want to read across the next several weeks.
#GivingTuesday has grown and changed since its inception. Each year we learn a little something new, become more skilled at reaching and engaging with our audiences, and find new technologies to carry our messages further and improve our results. And this year is no different.
These GivingTuesday resources will help you learn from past examples, add a little something new to your campaign, or bring an added element of the organization.
Giving Day Playbook by the Knight Foundation
The Knight Foundation’s Giving Day Playbook is a must-read for anyone launching into GivingTuesday this year.
It is incredibly detailed with specific steps, tips, and information about every step of the process for creating a Giving Day around your cause, starting before your campaign begins and going all the way to the follow-up you should consider after your campaign ends. With specific templates and resource banks for different areas of the prep and legwork, you will find everything you need to keep things organized, moving, and growing.
You’ll notice that the playbook is written for a foundation audience but don’t let that deter you. The guidelines and wisdom it offers are widely applicable to nonprofits.
As with any large guide, there will be parts of this one that don’t apply to you or that you won’t want to use for your campaign. So, as always, read with an eye towards you, your goals, your audiences, and your story and implement the ideas that make sense. But be sure to take a close look at the goal-setting chapter. With deep guidance on setting measurable and actionable goals as well as ways to structure and target them for your audiences, you might find yourself using this part of the guide for all of your campaigns.
Check out the playbook at https://www.givingdayplaybook.org/
The Comprehensive Guide to Planning a #GivingTuesday Fundraising Campaign
To get a complete picture of what a GivingTuesday plan should look like, read our GivingTuesday ebook alongside the guidebook from the Knight Foundation. Picking up where the Knight Foundation playbook leaves off, our Comprehensive Guide to Planning a #GivingTuesday Fundraising Campaign offers guidance on areas of your campaign such as determining rewards and donation tiers, rallying your audience, and, of course, storytelling.
When it comes to telling your story, the ebook walks you through a series of questions to help you uncover your story and then figure out where and how to tell it leading up to GivingTuesday and on the day itself. It also offers specific ideas for how to publicize your campaign.
Download the guide and access our Giving Tuesday resource center.
GivingTuesday 2014 Impact and 2015 Opportunities
Maybe you read this when it was published last year, but this article is a great read to get your mind in the GivingTuesday spirit again. Several synopses of what organizations all across the board did last year provide a great starting place for developing a concept for your campaign this year. From organizations that made GivingTuesday a big part of their 2014 end-of-year fundraising campaign to those who joined forces with others for the day, this piece is a treasure trove of ideas to get your wheels turning.
As for this year, this article and related webinar talk about partnerships for GivingTuesday. Whether you have partners or not, thinking about how best to approach and use corporate sponsors is a great place for your head to be as GivingTuesday approaches.
Double The Donation’s GivingTuesday Blogs
Beyond the campaigns and planning and promotion, don’t forget that matching grants and matching gifts are great ways to make an even bigger impact on GivingTuesday. Double the Donation has been publishing posts lately with fantastic tips and tricks to making matching donations work for your organization and dispelling assumptions and myths (turns out that increasing the match doesn’t always increase the number of donations).
With great suggestions about how to engage supporters to find matching grants on your behalf and a great free GivingTuesday matching tool, this is one resource that can give your campaign a boost.
Read more about how to incorporate matching gifts into your GivingTuesday campaign.
If you don’t find the inspiration or wisdom you seek in these resources, don’t forget about givingtuesday.org. With pages of resources, this central site offers everything from toolkits and case studies to papers written about the science of giving and gratitude. Dig into these materials now and come back to them throughout the year for information to fuel your fundraising plans.
What are your favorite GivingTuesday resources? Sign up for our Giving Tuesday weekly for more as the big day approaches.
