Monday Mixtape 027: 2018 Giving Tuesday Tips
Here’s your Monday Mixtape, a weekly newsletter from CauseVox designed to jumpstart your week, challenge your thinking, and inspire you to keep at it.
Each week, we’ll hand-pick must-read articles, thinking, resources, and stories for nonprofit fundraisers and leaders and drop it in your inbox. Have suggestions or questions? Let us know at blog@causevox.com. Enjoy this week’s Mixtape!
Summer’s winding down, back to school sales have started, and you know what that means.
Time to think about #GivingTuesday.
Sure, right now we’re all inclined to think more about beach days and ice cream cones than the Global Day of Giving in November. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from successful #GivingTuesday campaigns on CauseVox, it’s this: Those folks start early.
So this week, we’re taking our first look at #GivingTuesday 2018, and how to make it your best one yet.
Here’s this week’s mix:
“Good seasons start with good beginnings.” –Sparky Anderson
Track #1: #GivingTuesday 2018 Best Practices & Ideas For Nonprofits by Candace Cody at CauseVox
Start off on the right foot with Candace’s post on best practices. She highlights four important areas: starting early, goal setting, sharing stories, and making partnerships.
All of these areas are important, and Candace has great ideas in each category. However, if for some reason you only read one part of this post, I recommend the section on goal-setting. Candace makes a point that often gets missed in fundraising discussions: there are more goals to set than just dollar amounts.
In addition to your final monetary goal, consider setting goals related to impact and engagement, too. #GivingTuesday is more than an opportunity to raise money, it’s also a time to attract new donors, inspire new peer-to-peer fundraisers, and educate your community about your cause.
Track #2: 31+ Giving Tuesday Ideas (That You Haven’t Thought Of) For 2018 by George Weiner at Whole Whale
This list is a great resource to get the wheels turning as you plan your campaign. George has lots of good ideas, and this post is definitely worth a look.
Some of the standouts are: drafting a quarterback to be the internal point person, using social norms and price anchoring to influence donors via your donation form, and offering video messages from donors.
My favorite thing on the list is #27: “The best GivingTuesday ideas are not in the room.” Look to your community of supporters for inspiration, they may already be doing great things to raise money for your cause.
Weekly Wow: CauseVox Releases New Guide To Help You Plan Your 2018 Giving Tuesday Campaign
This Giving Tuesday planning guide provides a full overview from start to finish on how you can launch a successful campaign for your nonprofit. Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Overview of #GivingTuesday
- Setting a campaign goal
- Crafting a compelling story
- Promoting your campaign
- And much more!
Don’t miss out this year! Download our free #GivingTuesday planning guide so you can take advantage of this day of giving.
Track #3: Is Giving Tuesday A Waste Of Time? by John Haydon at johnhaydon.com
I understand that some of you are #GivingTuesday Skeptics, and I absolutely applaud your hesitancy to do something just because everyone else is.
Obviously, at CauseVox, we think #GivingTuesday is worth your time, simply because of the growth we’re seeing and the way nonprofits are leveraging it to rally their communities and raise money. But you don’t have to take our word for it.
John reached out to nonprofit professionals to get the inside scoop on whether or not #GivingTuesday is worth it. He starts out with what I think is a very valid point: “… Giving Tuesday is NOT just a 24-hour fundraising campaign. It’s a movement that your supporters are embracing, more and more each year.”
There’s a lot of wisdom in this post about how to make the most of #GivingTuesday, what you can reasonably expect a one-day campaign to accomplish, and how your relationship with your donors is still the most important thing. The pros win out over the cons if you do your homework.
Track #4: #GivingTuesday Tips From 5 Nonprofits That Raised Over $334K Last Year by Tina Jepson
What makes a #GivingTuesday campaign successful? What exactly are those folks doing to meet and exceed their goals? And, perhaps most importantly, can we do it, too?
In this post, Tina takes a look at five CauseVox campaigns from over the year that has knocked #GivingTuesday out of the park. And, good news! A lot of what they did is completely repeatable and easy to steal, I mean, be inspired by.
Want your campaign to join these elite fundraisers? Focus on: recruiting and inspiring personal fundraisers, getting creative with your donation tiers, using incentives wisely, centering your impact, and using video to tell stories.
Bonus Tracks:
By the way…
It is not too soon to plan for #GivingTuesday. Strengthen your campaign with our free educational webinar on August 26 at 1PM (EST).
We’ll break down how you can plan and promote a successful #GivingTuesday campaign, talk about best practices, and give tips that other fundraisers have used to drive success.
You can learn more and register here.
Thanks for reading!
– Megan
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P.S. Questions about this week’s mix? Suggestions for next week? Don’t leave me in the dark. Let me know by emailing me at blog@causevox.com.
