Mobile-friendly appeals. On Give to the Max Day in Minnesota last November, the majority of donors made a gift using a tablet or smartphone, and other giving days are seeing big year-over-year increases in mobile giving. “You have to build strategies designed for mobile,” says Jake Blumberg, executive director of GiveMN, the nonprofit that runs Give to the Max Day, which supports Minnesota charities (and raised $21.1 million last fall, its 10th anniversary).
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Fundraisers need to remember how it’s different from, say, sending emails to supporters, Blumberg says. “It’s the difference between a couple hundred words and two images being visible on a screen and seeing two sentences and maybe one image being visible and read.”
Mobile-friendly payment. Payment options that don’t require donors to type out their credit card numbers on tiny screens will increasingly matter more, says Kestrel Linder, chief executive of GiveCampus, a fundraising platform for schools and colleges that’s on track to run as many as 1,000 giving days this year. PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other payment options can make transactions more seamless.
And don’t forget donor-advised funds: Make transferring cash from these accounts one of the options for donors at checkout. At the Communities Foundation of Texas, more than one donor-advised-fund holder in four gives on North Texas Giving Day, according to Susan Swan Smith, chief giving-day officer.
Video. Facebook Live, YouTube, Instagram Stories, and more are increasingly important to giving days, says Linder.
It helps keep supporters engaged. “A couple of times a day, I’m going to come back to see the athletic director doing something goofy or watch a message from the [college] president that’s being livestreamed,” he says.
Online profiles. Regional giving-day organizers are helping charities that participate in their events create online profiles that provide contact information and describe what the nonprofit does, what the gifts will support, and sometimes the organization’s financial data. The profiles tout matching gifts the charity has raised to make supporters’ contributions go further — and often feature video to help make the pitch.
Online shopping carts. Many donors support more than one charity on a giving day. Amplify Austin, for example, finds that its donors support an average of two causes. Rather than making donors check out for each cause they support, giving-day organizers are favoring platforms that let people easily make more than one gift at a time.
Fundraising focused on a single cause. Some giving-day events are succeeding by targeting specific missions. For instance, the Pittsburgh Foundation holds a “Critical Needs Alert” giving day in May, a 16-hour marathon to support frontline social-service charities. The Archdiocese of New Orleans started #iGiveCatholic in 2015 to piggyback on Giving Tuesday each year and gather support for local Catholic congregations, schools, and other charities; similar Catholic-focused giving days have sprung up in other cities.
At Kansas State University, a new daylong event in March called “All In for K-State” raised more than $320,000 to combat hunger on campus. The university discovered that 40 percent of students skip meals due to financial issues; the campaign supported Cat’s Cupboard, the on-campus food pantry, and has helped make it available to university employees in need as well. The drive not only raised money but also uncovered major new supporters; for instance, Dillons Stores, a supermarket chain, made a $50,000 gift, its first to the university, according to Eric Holderness, associate vice president for development.
Tracking pixels. Tiny bits of code, like Facebook Pixel, can now help more charities track donors who visit giving-days websites and fail to give — and then follow them on their social-media or Google accounts with targeted ads aimed at nudging them to follow through. Tracking in this fashion can also make sure that thank-you ads appear in donors’ web activity once they give. “It enables real-time stewardship,” Linder says.
In-person connections. Holding events ahead or during a giving day can expose donors to the feeling of participating in something bigger than themselves, which leads to gifts. And don’t forget that giving days, and charities themselves, are often fueled by volunteers. At some events, such as North Texas Giving Day, charities have begun asking donors to pledge volunteer hours as well as money. During last September’s event in Dallas, people pledged more than 430,000 hours — the equivalent of about 200 full-time employees.
