While GivingTuesday 2020 doesn’t kick off until December 1, key organizers and leadership supporters behind the global generosity movement have created an emergency response to the historic need created by the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of #GivingTuesdayNow. Taking place on May 5, this landmark fundraising event will seek to unify individuals, nonprofit organizations, communities, small businesses, and brands in an effort to propagate financial and emotional support for one another.
As a new global day of giving and unity, #GivingTuesdayNow will seek to maintain the momentum generated by #GivingTuesday 2019, where millions of people worldwide banded together and raised over $2 billion for the nonprofit community. With nearly every aspect of our daily lives affected by COVID-19, the time is now to act on behalf of the communities and missions that need our help most. Here are 3 quick tips on how to maximize your effectiveness, and your impact, on #GivingTuesdayNow.
1. Drive Online Donations
The social distancing guidelines we’re all mindfully following right now make the need for effective online donation pages all the more critical. To that end, a wide array of online fundraising applications are currently available on the Salesforce AppExchange designed to call your constituents to action and support your central cause. Setting up a standalone page used to collect online donations is absolutely essential in the current fundraising landscape and is only becoming more imperative. $511 million of the $2 billion raised during 2019’s GivingTuesday came in from online donations, an increase of 28 percent from the $400 million raised online in 2018.
Dedicated online fundraising pages offer a unique chance to clearly illustrate the mission of nonprofit organizations worldwide and provides them with an outlet in which to better tell their stories and more intimately appeal to their audiences. While services like GoFundMe and PayPal’s donate button can help your organization transition to online fundraising, a dedicated online fundraising tool equipped with your branding, donor data collection, and automatic receipts are a must in order to set your brand apart.
2. Strategize Your Social Media
You need only consider that #GivingTuesday and #GivingTuesdayNow both prominently feature hashtags in their official names to understand the importance social media’s role plays in your fundraising strategy. The very nature of these giving events relies on the ability to share our awareness and the importance of nonprofit missions. Where better to publicly illustrate that importance than on social media?
Instagram now allows eligible nonprofits and their followers the ability to raise money and awareness directly on the app. Simply switch your Instagram to a Business Account (if you haven’t already) and sign up for Charitable Giving Tools in order to activate the Instagram Story sticker on your organization’s account. Instagram Stories are used by over 500 million unique users daily. Couple in the functionality of hashtags and creative tools to customize your messaging and you have all you need to engage your followers in a dynamic, effectual fashion.
Facebook provides numerous charitable and fundraising options as well: Community Help delivers an outlet for organizations to offer assistance and receive support, Facebook Live + Donate encourages giving through a prominently-featured donate button on live videos, and you can even create your very own fundraiser landing pages directly on Facebook. When juggling these promotional strategies, it’s critical to maintain an omnichannel marketing approach to social media use. Any content created for #GivingTuesdayNow should be harmoniously released on all social media networks your organization has a presence on, including those not mentioned above, like Twitter and LinkedIn.
3. Leverage Peer-To-Peer Fundraising
Any effective fundraising campaign should look outward past its own internal campaigns. Utilize the relationships and sense of community your nonprofit efforts have fostered and encourage your supporters to create fundraising campaigns of their own. Through Salesforce, your organization has the ability to create these peer-to-peer campaigns for your network of constituents, allowing supporters of your mission to curate their personalized takes on the importance of #GivingTuesdayNow.
Once created, these personalized fundraising campaigns come equipped with distinct analytics used to track individual fundraising goals that connect back to the overarching campaign. Laying a foundation of messaging and fundraising intent for your followers then allows them to craft messaging according to their personal perspectives and unique voices. Doing so instills a sense of empowerment in your constituent base and deepens the relationships with your organization in the process.
Even now, while we inhabit our own personal spaces and remain distanced from one another, we would do well to remember that distance does not equal detachment. If we unite in support for communities and nonprofits around the world, where we are or how far from one another we might be will cease to matter. The true meaning of #GivingTuesdayNow is to unite, to inspire, and to strive for a better world where the worthiest causes are supported and encouraged. Through #GivingTuesdayNow, we can all come a little closer together and make sure our post-COVID-19 world is made all the better by our efforts.
