Because
the date for Thanksgiving shifts every year, last year’s Giving Tuesday (always
scheduled for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving) took place on the earliest
possible date: November 28. This year, it is scheduled for as late as it will
ever be: December 3.
This
gap between 2019’s two biggest fundraising dates of the year is the narrowest
possible timeframe, putting just 28 days between the two. Many nonprofits
launch their year-end campaign with Giving Tuesday, but this year, that would
mean a shorter campaign and overlapping communications.
With
Giving Tuesday only 8 weeks away, now is the time to reevaluate your readiness
for both major events.
FOLLOW THE 3-POINT CAMPAIGN SUCCESS
“RECIPE”
Even
with changes you may need to make this year, it’s still important to structure
all your campaigns around these key components:
- A Goal: Make it clear to your donors what your need is
- A Deadline: Both Giving Tuesday and Year-End create natural deadlines. Be sure to leverage the deadlines in your communication
- A Matching Gift: It is ideal to have a matching gift for both Giving Tuesday and a larger match for your year-end campaign
As
always, your communication should include a good story to show the impact of
their gifts. These stories will reinforce your “why” and show the donor the
impact they can have with another gift.
You
most likely have a standard communication pattern that you follow for year-end
campaigns, but this year, you’ll need to reevaluate both the timing and the
content.
You
may need to position communications in a different order or insert a non-ask
communication right after Giving Tuesday, perhaps as part of your Giving
Tuesday thank-you messaging. Remember, people don’t give to support your
organization, they give to help others. A non-ask communication gives you a
chance to remind your donor base of those others, your recipients, who are your
“why.” (Don’t worry: People will often still give from a non-ask communication
if you provide a donate button or link.)
This
year, video might be even more important than ever for conveying your why.
EVALUATE YOUR GIVING “JOURNEY”
One
of the most important donations you’ll ever receive is the one you give
yourself. Follow your own marketing or email communications (from both a phone
and a computer) from the various asks you place on different platforms all the
way through the donation to see what it’s like. It can be enlightening.
People
expect easy online transactions. Every hurdle they have to clear reduces the
chances of them completing their donation.
With
iDonate, your donors will enjoy a seamless giving experience from a technology
perspective. Unfortunately, it’s easy for nonprofits to unintentionally create
friction in their giving journey in other ways. This can happen through:
1. EMBED PLACEMENT
Page
design and messaging play a big role in directing your donors’ flow of
attention. Your giving page should be very simple!
When
visitors arrive at your giving page, do they immediately see the donation
button or do they have to search for it, especially if they’re on a mobile
device? Once upon a time, a big red donation button in the top right of your
giving page was all you needed. Today you may need to consider a pop-up
that asks them one last time before they leave the page (without giving) or a
sticky bar across the top of the page.
2. CONSISTENT BRANDING
It’s
important that donors feel secure as they click their way across multiple
channels.
If
at any point they feel disoriented, they get nervous about completing forms and
giving money. iDonate’s
embedded forms mean they’ll never click on your
donate button and be taken to a third party page to finalize their gift, which
reduces their confidence in the security of their transaction.
But
within that secure context, you still need to establish a look that donors can
recognize. You do this through consistency of fonts, colors and imagery styles,
as well as your logo, in all your communications.
Campaign
themes for Giving Tuesday and Year-End can help guide your donors through the
giving process, too. iDonate lets you brand your giving embeds to match the
look and feel of your organization’s brand and customize your thank you emails.
3. MESSAGING
Imagine
that someone clicks on one of your social media links that takes them to your
giving page. Understand that they may not have clicked to donate just yet, but
to learn more about the specific message in the ad or ask. When they arrive,
will they know they’re in the right place and will they know what to do?
- Does the flow of messaging make sense?
Help
those who click on your ad or social media post know that they have arrived
where they intended to go by mirroring the ad headline and imagery that
attracted them. iDonate landing pages allow you to customize messaging on
social media and email that links directly to corresponding giving pages. Have
you taken advantage of your unlimited number of giving iDonate embeds and
landing pages, which make it easy to customize multiple campaign messages for Giving
Tuesday and year-end?
- Can visitors quickly see what your organization is about without having to read walls of text?
Use
headers, bullets, formatting and imagery or icons to help them quickly grasp
the content, even if they skim.
- Is the focus on your organization rather than those you serve or on your donors?
Structure
sentences and ideas to begin with your recipients or donors as often as you
can. Example: “Veterans receive” or “Your donation provides…” rather than “We…”
wherever possible.
- Can donors quickly see the impact of each donated dollar?
Rather than vague explanations of what donations provide, share the specific impact of specific gifts (i.e. $10 provides 3 meals) and also what your donors have enabled you to provide (i.e. 1,000 families fed in 2019). iDonate embeds allow you to include this information as a donor inputs their gift amount, but it can be impactful on your page, as well.
- Does your page ask them to do too many things?
Educating
donors is important, but there should be only one ask: Give.
Don’t distract them with any links or other possible actions.
- After donating, did you receive a thank you communication?
If
so, have the messaging and branding been updated in years? Was it customized in
keeping with the campaign? iDonate allows you to customize your gift receipts
and thank yous.
- As a first-time donor, did you immediately receive the first welcome email?
Over
the first few weeks after donating, new donors should receive a series of
communications (called a Welcome Series) that go deeper into your nonprofit’s
story and invite them into a journey toward becoming a regular donor. This
includes introducing them to the iDonate donor portal and other giving options,
such as noncash.
NextAfter
studies show that donors who give a second gift within three months of their
first one tend to have a lifetime value 4x greater than other donors. A noncash
ask is an easy way to accomplish this, as it is a donation that also helps
donors who are looking for an easy way to offload something valuable. iDonate
does all the work to process noncash donations.
LEVERAGE MULTIPLE GIVING CHANNELS
Your
target audience prefers different paths to learning about and donating to the
causes they care about. Some prefer text giving. Others love to fundraise for
you! Some organizations will have annual events. This is the time to set up all
the giving channels iDonate offers: text giving,
peer-to-peer,
event
ticketing and noncash donations.
SUMMING
UP: As you approach this important fundraising season, you can
trust that iDonate provides the reliable and simple giving experiences your
donors expect. But as you consider your donors’ giving journey for your Giving
Tuesday and Year-end campaigns, attention to the short gap between them and to
a streamlined look, feel and message can help guide your donors to and through
the entire multi-channel journey…from first touch to last.