The Giving Tuesday Countdown: Three Weeks, One Day, and the Follow-Up You Don't Want to Skip

Transcript Recording:

Leya Simmons (00:09)
Hi everybody, I'm Leya Simmons and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Better Unite. I am also not only today's host, but the presenter for our 501c Drop. I sat where you sit today. If you are new here, um or and if you've been here, you've certainly heard me say this before. But if you're new here, I was a frontline fundraiser, just like a lot of you are, and I was a development director, an executive director. I've sat on many boards.

and all of this I did prior to starting Better Unite. I have been on board since 2000s and I've been a donor since that time as well. So when I talk about Giving Tuesday, I'm I'm talking about it as somebody who has done what you will do, which is stare at that donation thermometer, begging it to move at 10 PM the night of Giving Tuesday. Uh, you know, I started

This session thinking about a couple of weeks ago, we did a session on the year-in squeeze. Um, the that that included like the big picture, year-in fundraising, thinking about all of the components that were coming together for us this year: the election, the economy, and the new tax rules. So today I want to have a really practical and tactical follow-up and um give you a playbook for Giving Tuesday.

A number that I want you to hear and think about is $4 billion. That is how much Americans donated last year in 2025 on Giving Tuesday. 4.0 billion. That actually was up 13% from 2024 from just the year before. And that's all of that occurred in one single day. So my question for you is.

Maybe it's not even a question, but what I want you to think about is that the money's out there. We we know that donors are ready. And when your donors open their inbox on for this year, December 1st, are they gonna hear from you before they hear from the other 40 to 50 nonprofits that they also are hearing from that day? And they're all sitting right next to you under the email that you are sending out to your donors.

It just like with the election, we're all being inundated all the time. So that is what today is about. Um, today is actually November 10th. I'm I'm recording this, and today is November 10th. Giving Tuesday is Tuesday, December 1st this year. That is exactly three weeks to the day from today. And I I actually picked this date on purpose. So there's one trap that we see, and it happens every single year. A nonprofit ends up treating Giving Tuesday as

One single email on one single day. Somebody on the staff, or even worse, your favorite AI tools, you know, your Claude, writes that email on Monday the night before. It goes out on Tuesday morning. I mean, this is like the essence of an afterthought, right? And then everybody wonders why do the results this year look exactly like they did last year? The nonprofits that are actually going to grow on Giving Tuesday, they don't treat it as one single day.

They're gonna treat it as, I mean, well, in in this case and now, 22-day, a 22-day campaign that is going to have kind of a peak in the middle. Giving Tuesday is one in the three weeks that come before it. And this is a part a lot of people miss, and something that you're probably getting familiar with me harping on, it's going to keep going in the days that follow it. So by the end of this episode, that you're gonna walk away with like a virtual calendar.

Um, I want you to have what you can send each week between now and Giving Tuesday, and what you're going to want to set up before the Thanksgiving holiday, when to post and what to email on December 1st on Giving Tuesday, the day itself, and what you're gonna want to send out on December 2nd, which is the day, again, like I said, that many people are going to skip. Also a couple of days and even weeks after. So, and one more thing before we dive in.

The National Giving Tuesday totals that you're gonna hear about this year and every year, they come from something called the Giving Tuesday Data Commons. And BetterUnite, our platform, is one of the data providers and partners that feed that information and feed the data set that we get. So throughout today, I'll share some of what we saw from nonprofits last year, not just what the industry reports say. All right, let's start with a quick check. Have you sent your first Giving Tuesday email yet?

I'm pausing for effect. If you said no, please don't worry. You are in good company. And honestly, you're right on time. You're right where you should be. I've got you. If you said yes, good. Stay with me though, because we're gonna make sure that your next five sends are just as strong. And if you were listening to some of my earlier um podcasts and some of the earlier guidance that we were providing, we were very much recommending that in the weeks prior to right now.

That you maybe were sending some contextual emails out in October, but last week, the week the of the actual election here in the US, you were actually staying decently quiet because of that drowning noise that we all experienced. All right, so first of all, let's start with a three-week sequence. Um, I want to talk you through the calendar. One thing I I kind of want you to hold on to throughout this whole conversation is that we want to warm up.

The list of prospective donors before we make any ask. And if you move in this direction, then on December 1st, it's gonna feel a whole lot more like payoff to your donors, and it's not going to feel like a cold request that comes out of nowhere. And you gotta think about this like from the donor's perspective as well. If the only time that you hear from a nonprofit, and I promise you this happens more often than it should, it's certainly happened to me, it's likely happening to you right now from other nonprofits.

you you only hear from them when they want some money. And the email that you get starts to feel like this guilt-ridden bill or invoice. And then eventually what happens? You stop opening the emails. They feel bad. But if you heard a great story from that nonprofit a couple of weeks ago, and then they told you about this exciting opportunity that was coming up.

And then they thanked you over the Thanksgiving holiday for whatever you have already done and however you've already shown up for them. By the time that the ask shows up on December 1st on Giving Tuesday, they're they're like primed and practically waiting for it. So let's break down by these three weeks that we have remaining. Week one, which is this week, November 10th through the November 16th, we're gonna send one email and it's an impact story.

One person, one outcome, but no ask. None. And I know that in kind of the scheme of things that could feel really weird that we're only three weeks out from the biggest donor the d biggest donation day throughout our year. Um, you're you're you're just three weeks away, and your biggest fundraising day is on the line. Hear me out, do this anyway. No ask. The goal of this first email is to remind people.

Why they made a donation to you in the first place, or why they became involved with your nonprofit in the first place. It's your mission that attracted every single person. Pick one real person or entity, if it's animals or the environment, but pick a real story around a real, ideally human, if you can, and highlight how your nonprofit helped them this year. Tell what was going on before, what changed.

And what life looks like now or what the experience or you fill in the blanks for your per per particular mission. Put a photo with it best you can, right? No good, we're not gonna compromise any uh confidentiality or any identities, but we want to show peep people ideally in photos. All of our data is going to tell us that people are drawn to photos of people. We want to show people uh and we want to show them actively and we want to show them visually. We're a visual TikTok society, so that's what we need. And you're gonna wanna keep it short again.

We don't have very long attention spans anymore. Um, so so make your your the sentences that you use, make them count, make them concise and on purpose. And then we're gonna keep it very, very short, as I said. End it with something like: all of this happened because of you. This is your impact story. No text message just yet. We're gonna save our text messages um for later, and I'm gonna explain why in a minute. And no talking about who else is donating just yet. This is just that impact story.

And explaining the context around how the way that your interested party has already engaged with your nonprofit, the way that they have made an impact already. And week number two, next week, which is gonna be November 17th through the 23rd. This is your save the date week, right? We're going to send an email that tells our prospective donors three different things. It's gonna tell them the date, December 1st, the goal.

The actual dollar number that you're trying to raise, goals make people feel they they they make them feel like there's intention, they give them something to look to. So we always like that. And then we also want to describe, if you have one, the match. And I'm going to harp on the match here in just a minute, so bear with me. Um then in this second week, so next week's email, we're going to tell them what a specific amount can do.

$50 provides this, $100 covers that. We want to make it as concrete as we possibly can. And this is also the week that you're going to send a short opt-in reminder to your text subscribers. Something like giving Tuesday is December 1st. We're going to text you when the campaign goes live. That's it. You're just like planting seeds, planting the date, and planting that aspirational number. And then finally, or not finally, actually, then.

We're kind in the middle still, actually. So week three, which is Thanksgiving week for those of us here in the US, November 24th through the 30th. This one's it's like it's a little bit delicate. It's a little dicey because you know, y you want to to do something that says something and something that's real and something that matters because people are, you know, typically doing some level of work during that week, but it's also a holiday week and a lot of people are off and on vacation. So

A good note of gratitude during Thanksgiving week. I mean, you can hear it. It just makes sense, right? Pure thank you, nothing else. Um then on Sunday, which is November 30th, we want to send a short pre-preview email that's actually, I'm sorry, on Monday, December November 30th, we want to send a short preview email that says, tomorrow's the day. That evening,

We want to have a teaser text and not too late in the evening, right? The the old rules from when you were a kid, no calls after 8 p.m. Same thing texting. And honestly, I'd even say like 7 p.m. All of these times are in your local time. Pay attention to that too. So the goal for the like that third week is to build anticipation, but we don't want to build any sort of fatigue. We don't want people groaning when they see your name or like that ad nauseum, you know, during the election feeling that we got that was just like.

I'm being overwhelmed with emails and text messages from these people. We want them to think, oh, right, I know about this. They told me about this earlier. I'm remembering it. That day is tomorrow. And then finally, on December 1st, which is the day itself, three emails and two text messages. I'm gonna walk through the timing here in a little bit, but we want to, you know, as you're thinking about a calendar, you want to have a plan for on that actual day, day of.

It's gonna be three emails and two text messages. and then, so this is the real finally, on December 2nd, we're gonna send a thank you email that is going to actually highlight results and also a thank you text. That's in segment five. And as I've already mentioned, and again, if you've listened to me before, you know, it's kind of the segment that I get obsessed about: that follow-up, that through line to getting all of our donors to become recurring donors. All right, so

I've given you a bit of a calendar, what's going to happen between now and Giving Tuesday and December 2nd, the day after on Wednesday. I want to also provide for you six kind of rules that hopefully will help us make this calendar work. So, rule number one is going to be segment before you send. Again, if you've listened, you've heard me talk about segmentation with your email lists. Super important and hyper important now. Your current donors.

Your laps donors, your subscribers who never made a donation, your LIBUNS, right? They never made a donation. um Those, none of those should get the same exact first line of an email text, right? Your current donor is going to get, you made this possible. Your never ever gave before, they've just, you know, subscribed to your newsletter. They're going to get, you've been here following along, here's what's happening, right? Little bit of status.

And for those that were a donor but have not given in the last 12 months, the ones that maybe a year or two ago they kind of drifted away, they are this is like the easiest win, we think. They already said once, right? They're a returning donor when they've come back. So we want to write them a first line that encourages that activity and it says, We miss you, and here's how it's different, or here's what's changed. So who, I mean, when you think about this, right? Like who's on your list right now?

That you have not emailed since last December. It and you know, you can be honest with yourself about this. And it doesn't mean that you have failed in any way, but it's something to become aware of and do something about it once you figure out who those folks are. So, number two, we're going to say that text is the closer, but your email is the storyteller.

When you're thinking about like how am I y leveraging those two ways of communicating with my donors, think about the email as the place that you're going to have some more space. You're going to have the ability to add in an image. I know you can during emails, but I mean during text messaging, but it's likely better that we keep that in the email. We want to use the emails to tell the story. We want to have the text message drive action and close the deal. So we keep every text to one line and one length.

And we're gonna save text for the moments that really matter. Because if you text people every other day, they stop opening them or they unsubscribe, even worse. Texts stay powerful because they are rare. And rule number three is we're gonna write the whole sequence at the same time, like write it now, this week. Draft all of it, every single email and every single text message, and schedule them out in your scheduler. I like I am

I am begging you to do this, and it's not just because it's a best practice for um ways that you can go back and refine and you know, ways that you can like differentiate the tasks around this to the different people in your organization. It's also for your own mental health and self-care. Thanksgiving week is not when you want to begin writing copy. I mean, that's a week you need to be beginning to take a break.

You're going to have family in town. You're going to be cooking your turkey. You've got food that you're picking up or making pies or whatever it is that you're doing. The last thing that you need to be doing is wordsmithing a subject line and, you know, putting it in front of your board president for a final set of eyes to take a look at it. Like we don't want to have that happen on November 30th. Let me tell you, I have done this. Don't do it.

Write it all now, write it all this week, and schedule it out. And rule number four is going to say that every email points to a single donation page. So it's one link, one goal, one thermometer on that page. We don't send people to our homepage during this very concerted, very specific period of asking them to participate in a donation day that is a global donation day.

And we don't want to give them the confusion of having three different buttons. Every single send in this sequence is going to point to the same donation page that is specifically created for this effort. It's going to show that page, ideally, again, is going to show the goal and the progress towards that goal. And it needs to be simple, like you want, I know that the temptation is there to tell your entire life story and the whole history of your mission on that single page. Don't do it.

Let it be specific. You've told the story in the emails and the asks. People are very rarely visiting. You can link out to, and it's it's on your website. There they can click about and go see more, but we're gonna have one page that's dedicated to Giving Tuesday. And finally, we're going to actually, this is not finally, there's two more. Final and rule number five is I'm going to offer monthly donation options on the donation page.

Recurring donors are retained at a far higher rate than one-time donors. We know this. Giving Tuesday is also one of the best moments of the year to make that monthly option really visible. Because people are already in this like generous frame of mind. Thanksgiving just happened. I'm looking at the last month of the year where I'm going to be with generous with my family and my friends and hopefully my community. That's that's just where we all kind of live in that time.

So we don't want to hide it behind this like obscure checkbox. Make it obvious, visible right there, and also put that become a monthly donor opportunity in your thank you email if they do make a one-time donation on or before our Giving Tuesday. Finally, here's my actual finally. Rule number six, and this one is like this was going to change how you write every single email. Tell people that people like them support causes like yours.

If you have never read Dr. James Russell's nope, Dr. Russell James work out of Texas Tech, put it on your list, follow him on LinkedIn. He'll send you his Nothing is Gated. He has all of this incredible research and thought leadership that is very available to everybody in our industry, anybody anywhere. He has spent years studying psycho the psychology of why donors do what they do. And one of the things that keeps coming up for in his work is identity. So people, you know, think.

They don't make a donation to a cause in a vacuum. They just don't. This is not human nature. They support the causes that feel like people like me support them. The causes that their friends support. This is why people inviting their friends to an event or s or to you know to sit at their table at a gala or a luncheon. This is why this is so impactful and it works so well. Because people like me support causes like this.

We we you know we want to involve our donors' neighbors, their networks, their their friends in their church, their running club, their book club. That is the way to really spread and broaden the appeal. If you think about this, it's also why influencers work so well, right? So we want to stop writing appeals that only say, please help. Write appeals that say something like, parents in our neighborhood are stepping up for this.

Or families like yours made this happen last year. Over 300 people in Austin, fill in the blank with your city, have already joined. You're not like in that case, you're not just asking for a donation. You're telling them this is what people like you do. Even better if there's an aspirational element to that, right? Like somebody that you want to be like is already doing this. You do it too. You become closer to being like them.

All right. So in this is here, this where we're gonna tie it all right back into that calendar. Your save the date email in week two should name, if possible, who is already in this movement, who's already donated sponsors, who who who has stepped up and committed already. That could be your match sponsor, your board, your peer-to-peer fundraisers, um, your volunteer group, your giving circle. Whenever somebody sees that their friend

is fundraising or has given, or that people in their, you know, community or their aspirational community have already said yes. The ask is no longer just coming from a nonprofit, just coming from an organization name, right? It's coming from their people. And that's a that's like this is also the entire psychology behind peer-to-peer fundraising and the

GoFundMe model that you know the that peer-to-peer fundraising, GoFundMe is based on that peer-to-peer fundraising functionality. We know that it works well, and it works well because of this exact phenomenon here, because people like me do things like this. Yeah? So we're gonna get a little bit more into that here in a few minutes. But I do want to have one, I'm gonna give you a like a single practical tip here. When you first segment your list, look for the groups that are already have a sense of belonging, those that are already together. So you're

Alumni, your volunteers, it's a congregation, a neighborhood, a company, a city, as I mentioned, then write the first line to that group. Fellow volunteers. It's so inclusive, right? Our friends at First Methodist. It's it's like this tiny language change, but it makes the email feel like it came from inside of their already existing circle. So

That's our sequence. We're gonna have a story, a save the date, gratitude, the big day, and the thank you. Five touches in three weeks, and one single donation page. Now I'm gonna talk about the single biggest lever that you can pull to make that day work. And it's if you take one thing from today, take this. A match is the single strongest urgency lever that you have on Giving Tuesday. And it

I mean, I don't want to say has to in absolute terms, but it is very much better if you lock that in by the end of this week, the week we're in right now. And that way, if you are able to accomplish that, it can show up in every single send that I've just talked about. And so, like, you know, why does it work so well? Double the donation, one of our integration partners has done a bunch of donor surveys, and they have found that 84% of donors say,

They are more likely to make a donation when a match is offered. 84%. That's a huge margin. And one in three say that they would give a bigger gift. Or that they gave a bigger gift because of a match. That is like those are not small numbers. That is a whole different campaign, right? So we're gonna shift the direction if we're able to secure the match. When I was a development director, the match was always the thing that I would look back and wish that I had secured a month before. I mean.

I d actually made it happen a few times, but those times that I didn't, I was just like, ugh, this would have been better. It would have been more. So I am telling you now here, three weeks out, exactly today, make your ask this week. Make your match ask this week. If you already have a match lined up, good for you. Bonus points, gold star, A plus plus, way to go. If you don't, please don't worry again. I'm you know something that you should feel better. It's like a little fact that should make you feel better.

Is that the size of the match matters a whole lot less than having a match at all? So it there's a classic field experiment by two economists, Dean Carlin and John List. They tested matches in a real fundraising appeal. And what they found was that a one-to-one match lifted donations just as much as a two-to-one match and just as much as a three-to-one match. It did not matter the size of the match. The bigger ratio didn't do it.

they just needed to have a match. That's what made the difference. So please don't sit around and wait for that perfect donor or the ideal amount to come through or some gigantic pledge from a a non-existent, honestly, at this point sponsor. A one-to-one match up to five thousand dollars, up to two thousand dollars. All of those work. Have just having the match is what matters. And where do you find one this week, you ask?

I can just hear this question going off in everybody's minds. Four places. There's four that I can think of right now. One is a board member. Start with your board. Board members often ask, what can I do? How can I help this effort? they want to find a way to have their their donation that they that they're already committed to making to you. They want it to have legs and and get bigger and do more. This is that way. Number two, you go to a local business. So a bank, a car dealership, a restaurant group is a really great way to engage your potential.

Gala sponsor, right? To start by asking for, and for some of these companies, especially these bigger ones, even local ones, a you know, two to five thousand dollar match pledge is really not a huge ask for them. Um, they they they then get their name in every single email that you're sending out. It's a huge ROI and benefit for a local company, and it's real marketing dollars for them. So when you're going to them and asking them for these things, you're not always going.

To the executive director, or sorry, the executive director, to the CEO of your company, of the company, go to the marketing team. That's where that money can actually come from. And then it's just double doing double duty for the company and that it's an absolute tax write-off for them. And number three would be a past major donor. That one's pretty obvious. So go through, scrub your data. Who is it that you have maybe engaged before in something kind of different and unique? Call them, don't send a text message, don't send an email.

make the phone call, show up at their office, their wherever it is, and say, would you be willing to be the match that inspires everybody else? People love being asked to lead. This is just something that we know. So pick up your phone, make the phone call. And number four, and I think this is one that Austin o often also gets um for forgotten or kind of left behind, a pooled match. Three or four smaller pledges can combine

And each one puts in $1,000, even $500, and you are able to get to two, five, you know, $15,000, right? Together, they become a really significant match. And you can even name them, right? Like our Giving Tuesday champions or um whatever it is that you want to call them. Be more creative than that. But um make those asks, whomever, whichever one of those, and you know, go down the list, start with board, then move to company, whatever you need to do.

But make those asks this week, like today, tomorrow. We wanna have it secured. It doesn't even need to be paid, right? We don't, we're not asking for the money to come today. It doesn't even need to be paid until four weeks from now, really. But we want to have the pledge secured by Friday, if at all possible. Um, okay, now there's also two kinds of matches that we should talk about. And I think that we often get kind of stuck in this cycle of only thinking about one of them. There's the first one is like a campaign match, right?

That's what we just talked about. That's what I just described. One sponsor, one pool of sponsors, whatever it is. Um, and that those double the donation up to some sort of cap, right? The second one, and it's one that we we have talked about here on this podcast because we talk about what we've talked with double the donation, who is better unites integration for employer matching, is employer matching. So that is something where the donor goes to their own company and asks their company to match their donation.

most many, not I mean, not and but certainly smaller companies aren't going to have this in in all likelihood, but many will still honor it. Don't forget that. But many larger companies, corporations have some form of employer matching program. So often this money is free money left on the table. Industry estimates put unclaimed employer matching between four and seven billion dollars a year. Billion again with B.

And 78% of donors who are eligible for a match have no idea that they are. So what we want to do is add a single line to your donation. Well, actually, first two things. If your software allows it, the integration with a double the donation, I don't there might be other ones out there, but like I said, Better Unite integrates with double the donation.

We can have the confirmation page that they see once they've made their gift say, let's find out if your employer matches your donation. They type in their employer's name and it pulls it up and it lobs over the appropriate steps so that that employer automatically literally doubles the donation that they just made to the nonprofit. So that's first. But on the receipt, you can also say many employers match donations. Let's check and see if yours does.

Might not, and you can put a link there, or you can just say check if yours does in case you don't have that tech available to you. Um put that same line in your December 2nd email as well. That's the email that I'm going to tell you that you need to send out the day after Giving Tuesday. We're gonna come back to that. So, last piece on matches, we we we we like them because they unlock these moments. Instead of announcing one big match at the start of the day, we can come.

We and this is on I'm talking about Giving Tuesday on December 1st, we can actually release the match in stages. The first five thousand dollars is doubled until noon. Then we just locked unlocked another twenty-five hundred dollar match until eight PM. Each unlock creates a sense of urgency, it creates a little bit of a spike. If you've ever listened to um your NPR station, they do this all the time. They do it very well. It it really gives a people a reason to act right then, right now.

Instead of like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get back to that and come later. So we you know, we know a million things can come between making my donation and doing it later, like I thought I would. So a sense of urgency is always helpful. That's why we use stemometers and leverage other things, but the you staging out your match, staging out your match into these kind of time-blocked moments can really help with that urgency as well. All right, so we've got our sequence, we've got our match. Now we can consider getting our

Fundraisers to begin fundraising for us. And that's where we're going to look to peer-to-peer fundraising. So peer-to-peer is how you're going to turn your best supporters into your marketing team, into your own personal ambassadors. Your email list only reaches so far. It only talks to the people that have in some way engaged with you, already know you. So a peer-to-peer page reaches that person's sister, their college friend, their

Coworkers, the neighbor down the street, all of it. And here's one catch though. It only works, the peer-to-peer with combined with Giving Tuesday, only works if the pages are live and you know kind of seated, and I'm gonna come back to that, before Thanksgiving. A peer-to-peer page that appears on Monday, November 30th, is really it's not gonna get seen. And it's certainly not going to um do what we hope that it can do. So

Couple strategies on the peer-to-peer fundraising. First, recruit small and be very specific. 10 committed fundraisers beat a hundred invitations every single time. Don't send a mass email that says, want to fundraise for us. um That happens a lot with like a walk-run. And frankly, you'll see this too. It's not always answered. It's not a call that people really will heed. Instead, pick up the phone because again, we're nearing the end.

And um time is not our friend. So we're gonna pick up the phone and we're gonna call very specific people. You're gonna start with your board members, just like you did for the match, and then last year's top donors, and say saying something like, I'd love for you to be one of our 10 Giving Tuesday champions, our 10 Giving Tuesday leaders, our 10 Giving Tuesdays ambassadors. And you want to do that recruiting this week and next week, maybe the beginning of the Thanksgiving week.

Um, try to have that those pages and your ambassadors identified and recruited by the end of next week. So that would be like roughly November 17th. And then we're gonna try to launch the pages by November 20th. That gives your fundraisers a full week to share before the holiday happens. And then the day of Giving Tuesday, that's the day that they're able to help you close the deal.

People have time to post, they have time to text it to their friends, they have time to bring it up at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And yes, truly that happens. I have seen board members raise real money at the Thanksgiving table, and I have done this myself. And it's so much nicer to talk about your favorite nonprofit and mission at the Thanksgiving table than trying to like navigate the landmines of politics. Trust me on this, I've been there. So

Number three, we're also going to hand our peer-to-peer fundraisers, the people that are working for us, that are out there fundraising for us. We're gonna hand them a kit. Your fundraisers really want help. They don't want a bunch of work to do. They don't want another project. So you give them a very fully fleshed out kit with everything in it, maybe even more than they can use. It's got a pre-written page story that they can personalize with a sentence or two. Not a lot of work. A photo, two social posts that they can just copy and paste.

One text message that they can send to their friends and their personal goal is already filled in. Your job is to remove every blank box. Hopefully you've got a software tool that's going to help you with this. Um, because you know, every time there's a gap, a blank box, that is where your potential ambassador, fundraiser, marketing help, that's where they're going to stop. They'll stop working for you. So if we can get those created in advance.

And we can provide our fundraisers with every single thing they need, both within their on their page, the digital page that they've created, and the tools that they're going to use for their outreach. They're we're way ahead of the game. And then we're also going to seed that donation first. So we're gonna ask of our again, ambassadors, peer-to-peer fundraisers, those that are fundraising on our behalf. We're gonna ask them to make their own first donation because an empty page, a a page.

Sitting at zero, a thermometer that's you know stagnant, it looks abandoned. It's it's not inspiring and it doesn't call us to action. Um, we as humans like to jump in on success. Success breeds more success, right? So the other piece is we also, as humans, we nobody wants to be first. Second mouse gets the cheese, right? So you're gonna ask each fundraiser to make their own first gift, um, even if it's just $25, right? It doesn't have to be a lot.

we also can get a staff member or a board member to go in and seed some of those fundraising pages. If you've got volunteers that have created fundraising pages, ask your board to go in and you know make a small gift to each one of them. This is not hard and it doesn't have to be expensive. But we just want to see that there's money in there on the page so that other people feel safe joining in. Again, people give to people like them. And finally, we also want to make it a team sport. So

Put up your leaderboards, let there be photos, let them comment, let them compete against each other in this very friendly and lovely way that supports a common issue and a common goal. We can set up small friendly team challenges. Board versus volunteers is a classic one. You can also do like staff versus board. That's even better sometimes. It gives people to keep a reason so that they keep checking back. And just, you know, something fun that inspires that collegial. um

Or congenial, I guess that's the word I'm trying to say. Congenial competition. Um and and we want them, we want them engaged in paying attention on December 1st, too, right? And potentially making a second gift even on that day. One like quick practical note is however you set these pages up, we want to make sure that every fundraiser's page rolls up into our main campaign goal. Um so when they share, their friends see what the whole nonprofits thermometer is giving and where it's moving.

not just like one little page, right? Much more inspiring to see my goal moving towards um $50,000 or $25,000 rather than $1,000. Because it's the shared goal that is what makes people feel like they're a part of something, that they're joining in. And again, if your software does not easily offer peer-to-peer functionality, hit us up at BetterUnite, betterUnite.com, and we can get you up and running really, really quick. Okay, so we've got our sequence written, we've got our match down, we've got our fundraisers.

Working for us or getting ready. So now I am we're ready to talk about Giving Tuesday itself. I don't even know what minute we're on, but like it took a minute to get there, right? So um we're on December 1st. Here's how I want you to think about that day. It's three segments: a reason to give in the morning, a reason to share at midday, and a reason to finish at night. So we're gonna walk through all of that. First, the launch, our email goes out. It's here, right? State the goal, state the match.

Your morning text goes out with one line and one link. And your launch post goes up on social and you're gonna like, you know, do the thing where you pin it to the top of your page, you make sure you share it in your stories. So we want we want it to be the first thing that anyone sees all day. And then we're gonna have a progress update, and that's gonna happen something, sometime around noon. Noon, it'll be a second email. We're 40% of the way there. Whatever the real number is, and you can be real, right? No text at noon though.

We're gonna save those. Those are the tools that we're gonna use later. On social, you can post your thermometer, the live thermometer, you can post a video of you looking at the thermometer, something fun like that. And you're also at this time, you're gonna wanna shout out to the people that are fundraising on your behalf, your peer-to-peer fundraisers, and do that by name. Everybody loves seeing and hearing their own name. It makes them share again as a story even better and tag them when you're on Instagram and Facebook.

And from 4 to 5 p.m., we're gonna tell the story. No email, no text message, just on social. Post a story or a short video that is encapsulates your mission, your work, your organization, your group. It can be a volunteer, a client, a board member, your program director, you know, 30 seconds, really not long. Again, TikTok attention span.

30 seconds on why today matters, why it's important that somebody pays attention. That's the afternoon lift when everybody's kind of you know scrolling through or on their way home. And then from 7 to 9 p.m., we want to have like these are our final hours. we're gonna send that third and final email. Here's what's left. The match ends at midnight. Your final push text goes out. Again, I would say before eight, maybe it's seven to nine. Um, and you put up a countdown post on social. And then finally.

Very last thing in this one you can do kind of at midnight night of or early in the morning the next day. You want to have a thank you post on social media. Um, a little tease that later today will share the results. Um, you know, schedule it or post it close to midnight, and then go to bed and know that you've done a really good job. Give yourself some rest. Now, three things that can make your day run smoothly.

First thing is only one person. One person owns this entire effort. You know, we don't need a committee, fortunately, for this effort. It's just a single person's job. And I think it's better to have a single person doing all of this because th that just means that their whole job on December first is to post the updates, thank the donors publicly, make the sure the thermometer is working and operating the way it was. When I would run Giving Tuesday campaigns, um, the years that we had one owner, it was almost, I think.

Almost always me. Um, but those were the years that nothing fell through the cracks, right? Because we're not like navigating around who did what. It's just just one person. It's not a huge lift and it's the only thing they're gonna do all day. Next, we're gonna have real-time progress in the content. So $3,200 to go. Um, that that headline will beat any other paragraph about your mission every single time on Giving Tuesday. People already, they they already know your mission. What they want to know is whether you're going to make

your goal and whether the donation is going to be the one that gets you there. And then we want to stagger the match. Remember that unlocking the moments that I talked about earlier. So this is where you're going to use those one unlock around noon, another one in the evening. I mean it doesn't need to be a ton, but each one of those will create like a little spike of its own. And those are encouraging and kind of motivating to a lot of folks. So if you're if you're you know if you've kind of been treating the evening as an afterthought,

I want you to rethink that. Your final hours email might be the most effective one. And so it's really important again to write that today. Like think through what you're going to do and say on day of starting this week. And it gives you some time to refine it too. So that's December 1st. Now I want to move again to my favorite part, which is always follow-up and follow through. It's also a part that a lot of a lot of folks are going to skip.

This is the one I care about the most, and you know, you've heard me talk about it a lot. December 1st is going to be what gets you that first donation. December 2nd and the days following are going to decide whether you ever get a chance at a second one. And I'm going to give you the math here because I think it's really sobering. Most first-time donors never make a second donation. That is an unsettling and upsetting stat, and it should be to everyone in our sector. Only about 31% of first-time donors come back and give again.

You've worked so hard for the three weeks from when you finished this podcast to December 1st. And you've brought in a bunch of new donors. You've you've expanded your reach exponentially. But then if you do nothing about that the day after, roughly seven out of ten of them are gone by next year. Next Giving Tuesday, they're not even here. So here's the good news with that. Once somebody makes their second donation, however, their retention then

Basically doubles. So the second gift is the one that turns the single transaction into a relationship, what we're always looking for. And Giving Tuesday donors in particular are really worth this effort. A report from the Blackbot Institute and Giving Tuesday found that 65% of Giving Tuesday donors made a donation again the next year, compared to 52% of all donors. So these people are gonna stick.

But they only stick if you show up after Giving Tuesday, and I mean right after. So you could ask yourself, what did I send my donors the day after Giving Tuesday last year? And if the answer is nothing, that's okay. You get a pass, but and you're in good company. But that's exactly why we're talking about this. So on December 2nd, send out the results by noon, one email to everybody that gave.

Your total raised, the number of donors, what that money is going to fund. And you know, we really want concrete terms in this email. And it, and then we also want that same email to be a very real warm thank you. And the important part about this email that I've just described: real numbers, what happened, what we did, and thank you. There is zero ask in this email. Not, not even a soft one. Not a PS if you feel compelled to nothing. No, no ask.

Just thank you, just what you did. Next, we're gonna call or text our first-time donors within 48 hours. Short, personal, it's a thank you from a staff member or a board member. 30 seconds, a lot of times it's gonna be a voicemail. It could also be a follow-up text message, but from a personal phone, not from your, you know, your tools, your software tools. Hey, this is Leya from Community Works. I just saw your donation come in yesterday and I wanted to personally say thank you. Like that's all it has to be.

Research from Bloomering shows first-time donors who get a personal thank you within 48 hours are far more likely to give again. I honestly think it's the fine like I think it's the highest return hour that you're going to spend in that entire week. And that entire week is including Giving Tuesday. It is a great job for board members who don't like to make an ask. It is an incredible thing for those that are like, hey, how can I help you? But I'm not gonna ask for money. There you go. Make the thank you phone call.

Also, remind your Giving Tuesday donors about employer matching. And that's something else that you can do. Remember that four to seven billion dollars that we talked about that's staying on the table? Your December 2nd email is the best place to say, did you know many employers match donations? Again, we're not asking for any more money from our donor, but we're reminding them that, hey, sometimes your employers can match these donations. Look what more you could do. People are already feeling good about their donation, right? They are

Um, they're they're feeling very empowered and they they are they are the superhero, right? In your cause. Now you're showing them how to be even better, how to be more effective, how to double it without spending a single another dime. And we also want to still continue to pay attention to the rest of December, because as I mentioned in that year in squeeze, um several times, the last few days of December from December 30 right up to December 31st. It's really like December 26th to 31st.

Those often will rival Giving Tuesday in total donations when we look broadly across the entire year. So we want to keep that list warm all month,

But, and this is very important, segment your December 1st donors out of the repeat asks. If somebody made a donation on Giving Tuesday, they should just be getting thank yous and stories and impact in December, not another please donate email. It's really, really important. Everybody else, though, those are the ones that you're gonna reach out to in your end of year appeal. So we're gonna then, that's all of December. So Giving Tuesday, day after, super important, December 2nd.

And then December we do what we do, but in January we get to close the loop. So one impact update, early January, to say, here's what your Giving Tuesday donation did. This is just going to those folks that did that, made that gift on um on Giving Tuesday itself. It's got a photo, a number, a story. We're kicking off 2027. There's so many ways you can frame this. that that second donation is where we're headed. That's the the aim, and that's where we're all like all of this is leading up to.

Up to that second donation so that then they are actually like really in our movement. Okay, so if we put it all together, we've got our calendar this week by Friday, November 13th. We're gonna send our impact story email, but no ask will along with it, and we're gonna make our match asks. So we're gonna start recruiting 10 peer-to-peer champions, and we're gonna write down the whole sequence and schedule it. On the week of the 17th, save the date email with the goal and the match.

And what a donation does. Text opt-in reminder can be included in that email, but we're not sending text yet. And then by November 20th, we want our fundraiser pages, those uh extra peer-to-peer fundraisers. We want those created, we want them live, and we also want them to have ideally by November 20th, those first donations in there. So just go in and check on them and then get your board or encourage the person that created it to make a small gift. Thanksgiving week, it's a gratitude note.

This is very obvious. Then on the 30th, the tomorrow preview email and the teaser text. December 1st, three emails, two text messages, and one person that owns the entire thing. We're gonna launch it in the morning. We're gonna show a progress in the afternoon or at the midday. In the afternoon, we're gonna have a story, and our final hours are at night, and we're gonna stagger out our match if we have one. And then on December 2nd, ideally by noon, the results and the thank you email, no ask.

With the employer matching reminder, maybe, and the personal phone calls all during that day, personal phone calls and texts to every first-time donor within 48 hours. Right. So through December 31st, we're also gonna keep our list warm, but also have segmented out our Giving Tuesday donors. And in January, we're gonna send one impact update that sets up the second donation. I really want you to leave with this. Giving Tuesday is not just about one day. I mean, that should be.

Blatantly obvious from what we've just discussed. It really also should not be about one number or one thermometer. It's about how many of these people are still with you a year from now. If you get that first donation on December 1st and the relationship on December 2nd, that's the real win. That's when you know you've done it right. That is the success metric to pay attention to.

And I will say this as somebody has who, again, like I said, has sat in your seat. You don't have to do all of it. If you just do like three things today, go do these, get your match, write the whole sequence now, and write out and plan the December 2nd thank you note. That alone will put you so far ahead of the pack. So many of the nonprofits out there, but also share this with your friends. And if

I just have to mention, want any help setting any of this up? Campaign page, thermometer, peer-to-peer pages. That's exactly what we do over here at BetterUnite. So you can find us at betterunite.com and my team would be very happy to walk you through it. No pressure. These tips are yours. Keep them, do with them what you will. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I so appreciate you. Go make sure make those asks for your match. Do it today. Start it today. Um

And very best of luck on Giving Tuesday. You've got this. Here we go. Let's go do some good. Have a really good day, everybody.