Campaign Ideas for GivingTuesday

Toolkit for charities

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Choosing a GivingTuesday goal or objective is the first step to a successful campaign. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Acquire new donors……………………………………………………………...Page 7

Drive incremental donations from new and/or current donors……..………..Page 11

Strengthen relationships with existing donors and prime them for holiday/year end giving……………………………………………………....Page 18

Recruit new volunteers or engage current volunteers…………………………Page 20

Build awareness for your charity………………………………………….…….Page 22

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Next, plan a specific activity or campaign.

Once you set your GivingTuesday goal, the next step is to plan a specific activity or campaign that helps you accomplish your goal.

Whether that be finding a corporate matching partner, organizing a volunteer event, launching a petition, or simply creating a Thank You campaign, be sure it’s a tangible activity. This will prove far more effective than asking your supporters to donate to your cause just “because it’s GivingTuesday”.

Don’t forget to let us know about it!

Log into your account on www.GivingTuesday.ca and update your profile to let Canadians know about your GivingTuesday plans.

Update Profile >

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Best Practice:

Set a specific, tangible goal and underline the impact it will have.

Dans La Rue (Montreal) set a goal to raise $1,500 in 24 hours ‐ the equivalent of 500 pairs of new socks for at risk street youth. Using a simple landing page, a video and social media to spread the word, they raised over $2,000 in 2 days. This was enough to fund 650 pairs of socks, allowing them to be much more prepared for the cold season. 

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Get 8 Practical Media Tips >

Boston Terrier Rescue Canada set a goal to raise $5,000 in December to fund veterinary care for foster dogs. They created the “GIVING TREE CAMPAIGN” where supporters could fund a virtual decoration or a gift under the tree. By December 31st they had raised $6,680.

Best Practice:

Set a specific, tangible goal and underline the impact it will have.

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Campaign Ideas for GivingTuesday

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

If your primary objective this GivingTuesday is to acquire new donors, there are several key tactics that you can consider using when launching your campaign.

Donor acquisition doesn’t always have to be costly. If you focus your efforts on launching a campaign that your supporters can easily share with their friends and family, you can acquire new donors via word-of-mouth.

For example, GivingTuesday is the perfect opportunity launch a peer-to-peer social fundraising campaign or ask your supporters to help spread the word about your mission by sharing a fundraising page.

Objective: Acquire New Donors

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Sample campaign: In the spirit of Giving Tuesday, Food Banks Canada launched a clever campaign that let their supporters easily share the cause with friends and family by doing what they love to do: share recipes!

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

“Inside these pages you will find recipes from those who care about the issue of hunger in Canada. You can read, share and add your own recipe to it. Once submitted, your recipe will be reviewed and made live within one business day. And don’t forget… Add the missing ingredient to your recipe – a donation!”

Continued from last page

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Follow @GivingTuesdayCA on Twitter!

In the days leading up to GivingTuesday, ask your supporters to fundraise for your cause.

Best practices:

• Set a fundraising goal• Include a captivating story, photos and videos• Share the cause with friends and family on social• A small suggested donation makes it easier for new donors to

contribute - a useful approach if your goal is new donors

Let your supporters know about the free fundraising tools that are out there to make fundraising easier and more effective!

Objective: Acquire New Donors

Explore Fundraising Tools >

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

Drive incremental donations by identifying a specific need, objective, and describing the tangible impact of a donation amount. Here are some ideas on how to do it (and how not to do it):

Help us provide goats for families in need overseas. A $50 donation will provide one goat for a family in need.

Help us send 50 or more kids to summer camp. A $150 donation will send one child to camp for a week.

Help us launch our new innovative cancer research project. Our goal is $50,000.

☑☑☑☒ Donate to us because it’s GivingTuesday.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

The #1 challenge is to avoid “Give to us because it’s GivingTuesday” campaigns.

Instead, drive incremental donations by highlighting a specific need and describing the tangible impact of a donation amount.

Campaigns that perform well are those that highlight a specific fund. Perhaps you need a new kitchen or a new piece of equipment. The most successful GivingTuesday fundraising campaigns are those that used GivingTuesday as part of a longer campaign, as opposed to just focusing on the one day.

Free the Children kicked off a powerful campaign to complete a school overseas. They clearly stated the impact of each $20 donation; if you took your average 500 brick schoolhouse, and broke down the cost of construction, you would be looking at $20 per brick. A donation of just $20 would lay down the cornerstone of education.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

Find a Matching Partner

There are many ways to drive incremental donations from new and/or current donors but we’ll focus on one in particular: finding a matching partner. More and more, businesses are embracing GivingTuesday and partnering with local charities to match donations made on GivingTuesday.

It’s a win-win for both parties!

For businesses, it’s an opportunity to leverage corporate social responsibility and also to create more brand awareness. For charities, donations are matched and donors are likely to give higher amounts. Why? Because donors are motivated to give more when they know that their donations are going further.

Things to Keep in Mind

•Make sure the partnership is awin-win

•Trust is a must

•Ensure you have commongoals

•Keep to your mission

•Promote the match to yourdonors and let them know theirdonations have a greaterimpact if they give onGivingTuesday.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

The Right Business Partner

Find a company that you trust and is connected to your mission in some way:

•Local company or small business that has aninterest in supporting the community.

•Your cause is related to their business goals insome way. For example, a toy store maysupport a cause that helps children and asporting goods store may support anenvironmental organization.

•Look at your existing donors, volunteers andevent attendees for potential leads.

Look for mutually beneficial partnerships, not just ones that benefit your organization. Think about how your partnership could help the business meet their business objectives including:

•Reaching new customers•Enhancing their brand•Promoting awareness•Increasing traffic to their online website•Improving employee engagement andmorale

If you have an regular/promised donation in the coming months, you can take advantage of this and see if there’s an opportunity to set it up as a matching campaign.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

Clearly Define Goals and Roles

Take the time to clearly articulate and define all goals and roles of each organization to ensure successful execution.

• How will each party be recognized?• Who is responsible for reaching out to

media and other community partners?• What are the expectations around

availability?• What resources will each party invest?

Partnership Ideas

• Let companies know that your organization ishoping to find a partner that will adopt yourorganization as its GivingTuesday cause.

• Ask your partner to promote your cause totheir employees in a GivingTuesdayemployee giving campaign.

• Ask a local business to support the costsassociated with your GivingTuesdaycampaign and give them prominence incampaign material.

• For year-end giving, companies can givedonations to your organization in honour ofemployees, clients, or other stakeholders inlieu of holiday gifts.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

GivingTuesday has seen participation from many matching partners.

Businesses embraced GivingTuesday, with unprecedented matching gifts and many other creative and innovative GivingTuesday campaigns. We saw participation from large corporations like Interac, PayPal, CIBC, Deloitte, Tim Hortons, Morneau Shepell, McDonalds and Sobeys, as well as small businesses like South Street Burger Co., North York Chrysler, Paws For Pictures and more.

CIBC launched a one-day Twitter campaign on GivingTuesday to drive corporate donations from CIBC to CIBC Children’s Foundation with the help of retweets. For every retweet of CIBC’s #GivingTuesdayCA tweet on December 3, CIBC donated $1, up to a maximum of $10,000. The maximum donation was reached.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Objective: Drive Incremental Donations from New and/or Current Donors

Habitat for Humanity partnered with Air Miles for GivingTuesday

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

GivingTuesday is the perfect day to publicly and personally thank your volunteers, staff, donors and supporters for all of their hard work and support. In previous years, charities have created impactful storytelling and thank you campaigns that helped to strengthen their relationships and in some cases led to increased donations.

Thank your supporters via:

•Email•Social media•Website•Printed letter and/or phone (if resources permit)

Objective: Strengthen Relationships with Existing Donors and Prime them for Holiday/Year End Giving

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Create a Thank You Video

A Thank You video is a great way to get the message across. In one example, Pathways to Education created a video where their beneficiaries sincerely expressed their gratitude to supporters. The video was shared on their website, social media pages and email.

Creating a video doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive! Grab a smart phone and download an easy-to-use video editing app like Animoto or Magisto.

Objective: Strengthen Relationships with Existing Donors and Prime them for Holiday/Year End Giving

Pathways to Education GivingTuesday Video

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Need Volunteers?

Use #GivingTuesdayCa as an opportunity to shift the conversation away from giving funds and promote another important way to support your organization: volunteering.

•Team up with a local business to borrowsome of their employees’ professional skillsfor a day.•Ask volunteers to host a bake sale for yourcharity on GivingTuesday.•Consider running a volunteer program thathelps your local community and is alignedwith your mission (i.e. clean-up day).

Objective: Recruit New Volunteers or Engage Current Volunteers

Volunteers winterized 20 homes on GivingTuesday. 

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Need Volunteers?

•Employees of Ipsos Canadawere given an afternoon off workand encouraged to find a localorganization where they couldvolunteer their time. A team fromIpsos Montreal went to work atthe Welcome Hall Mission Thriftshop.

Objective: Recruit New Volunteers or Engage Current Volunteers

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Grab Attention

Building awareness for your charity can come as a result of many different kinds of awareness-building initiatives. GivingTuesday is the perfect day to launch a new project, announce your planned capital campaign, do something demonstrable that press will want to cover as they report on GivingTuesday or literally get out in the community and meet people face-to-face .

Objective: Build Awareness for Your Charity

Get out there!

•Organize a donation drive (food, socks,change, etc.).•Host a community open house and invite yourneighbours and local shop owners to get toknow you.•Team up with other local charities andorganize a community party so that everyonecan get to know each other. Invite yourneighbourhood community, friends and family,etc.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Do something creative that inspires action!

What better way to build awareness than to launch a campaign that strengthens relationships between your community and the beneficiaries of your cause!

In one example, Art à la Carte in partnership with Wellspring Calgary, launched a campaign where they asked their community to write Letters of Hope to acute care patients and their caregivers for the holidays. The results were inspirational. Their supporters become much more engaged in their mission and the story was featured by Global TV on local and national television, as well as in local publications.

Objective: Build Awareness for Your Charity

Left: Letters of Hope RecipientRight: Sandy Ottewell-Watson, Art à la Carte Volunteer

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Ask your Supporters, Donors and Volunteers to Share their Stories via Social Media

People love to share stories! Ask your supporters why they care about your mission and why they give. You can do this easily by posting your question on social media and asking them to complete a simple sentence like, “I give because…” or “For #GivingTuesdayCa, I am…”

Helpful tips:

•Ask them to use the hashtag #UNselfie in their post.•Share your supporters’ giving stories in your donorcommunications and on social media.

Objective: Build Awareness for Your Charity

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Ask your online and offline community to sign a petition and share it with their networks.

If you have a cause to rally for, get your supporters to participate in GivingTuesday by signing your petition and sharing it with their own personal networks to build more awareness of your cause.

Objective: Build Awareness for Your Charity

On GivingTuesday, Aworldatschool.org posted a petition to demand that world leaders stick to their promise that every girl and boy is in school and learning by 2015.

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

Want Media Coverage?

Last year, GivingTuesday received a lot of attention from Canadian media outlets. We saw GivingTuesday in print, on television and on radio. One question that we at GivingTuesday central are constantly hearing from journalists is “What are charities in our area doing for GivingTuesday?”

If you are organizing a community happening for GivingTuesday, be sure to tweet it to @GivingTuesdayCa and post it on your charity profile on GivingTuesday.ca. Media will be inquiring about events to cover so be sure to let us know about yours!

Objective: Build Awareness for Your Charity

8 Practical Media Tips for Non-Profits

GivingTuesday is a great opportunity to secure news stories and raise awareness for yourorganization and everything it does to benefit the community.

Get 8 practical tips on how yournon-profit can be part of the GivingTuesday news and tell its story to the media.

Get 8 Practical Media Tips >

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NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Become a GivingTuesday Charity Partner

No matter what you decide to do, make sure that you’re participating this GivingTuesday and that you’re maintaining your share of voice. 

It’s the opening day of the giving season and it’s the perfect time to prime your donors for the holidays and cultivate relationships. 

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