For many people, Thanksgiving will look different this year as coronavirus cases surge and some families opt to keep their distance. But on GivingTuesday, donors can expect the usual barrage of inspiring stories and appeals for support to flood their inboxes and social-media feeds.
This year’s celebration of generosity falls on December 1. While some groups are focused on raising emergency support, other nonprofits that aren’t on the front lines of the crisis are tailoring their messages to connect with the Covid-19 pandemic or leaning into the heightened relevancy of their causes. Many fundraisers say their strategy for cutting through the noise will follow what’s worked well in the past.
Even in a year when donors have made record contributions to many of the causes they care about, fundraisers shouldn’t worry that people who gave earlier in the pandemic won’t support them again, says Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday. (See Rosenbaum’s Chronicle opinion piece on the “myth of donor fatigue.”)
“Organizations would be making a big mistake going into their end of year thinking that people are tapped out or are less likely to give because they already gave,” he says. “People who give to disaster-relief efforts are more likely to give again, not less likely.”
In May, the nonprofit GivingTuesday, which coordinates the global movement encouraging generosity, put on GivingTuesdayNow, a giving day focused on the pandemic response. Donors gave an estimated $511 million online that day, on track with online donations during the charity’s regular end-of-year giving day in 2019.
“People are looking to generosity as the antidote to their fear and their isolation and injustice and division,” Rosenbaum says. “That’s how they’re responding.”
Money to Fill Covid Gaps
In Our Own Voice, a national nonprofit that advances reproductive justice for Black women, plans to use GivingTuesday to appeal for contributions to its Covid-19 emergency relief fund. The group has already given $30,000 grants from that fund to eight charities around the country for distribution of food, diapers, rent money, and other emergency needs through the end of the year.
The fund aims to fill gaps created when aid from the Cares Act ran dry. “Everybody’s been waiting for Congress to do another Covid relief package, and they can’t get on it,” says Marcela Howell, the group’s CEO. “It was just getting to be horrible.”
In September, In Our Own Voice earmarked $250,000 to help nonprofits meet urgent community needs. The organization hopes GivingTuesday gifts will help replenish that fund so it can make additional grants.
The Community College of Vermont is also focusing its GivingTuesday campaign on emergency funding through donations to its Life Gap program to pay for urgent student needs, such as child care or car repairs. The long-standing grant program supplements financial aid and helps ease expenses that might otherwise cause students to drop out.
This is the college’s first year participating in GivingTuesday. Its fundraising campaign includes a $10,000 matching grant, thanks to one couple’s gift.
On November 13, the college emailed a video appeal to 7,000 alumni that shared the story of Laura Dailey, a grant recipient, and asked alumni to donate to the program and unlock the matching gift. A separate email from Dailey went to roughly 800 past recipients asking them to share their experience as a Life Gap grantee and promote the fundraising campaign on social media. It did not, however, ask them to donate to the campaign.
The goal for the Community College of Vermont’s first foray into giving days was to raise $10,000 above and beyond the promised matching gift, according to Aimee Stephenson, director of resource development. Stephenson says she isn’t sure what to expect, but she thinks the match will inspire people to give.
“If we don’t reach our goal, then I will relaunch the campaign probably the following week and push it through to December 31,” says Stephenson. As it does each year, the college will also send a December direct-mail appeal for additional year-end gifts.
The Community College of Vermont has seen a big jump in gifts this year, largely from donors who were motivated by the pandemic. The J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation, for example, is paying the full cost of one college course for every student who graduated from a Vermont high school last spring.
Other community colleges have also seen spikes in giving this year, according to Kestrel Linder, CEO of GiveCampus, a fundraising technology company. By the end of October, community colleges that collect online donations through GiveCampus had already surpassed their 2019 fundraising totals by 47 percent. “Not only are people making more gifts, but more people are making larger gifts,” Linder says.
It isn’t that community colleges are changing how they appeal for donations, Linder says. Many, like the Community College of Vermont, had long-running student emergency funds. With the onset of the pandemic and its economic and social ripple effects, Linder says, “the message must be resonating so much more that they’re getting a bigger response.”
Tried and True Methods
Other fundraisers say they’re tweaking their messages but not their strategy for GivingTuesday and year-end appeals.
That’s the case at Farm Sanctuary, says Lisa Fielding, chief development officer.
“We’re not rethinking it too much because everything’s on track. Our donors are still giving with the same kind of pattern they have in past years,” she says. Farm Sanctuary, an animal-protection charity that advocates for farm animals, will offer to match GivingTuesday donations. But the appeal is very of-the-moment. “We are definitely incorporating the Covid messaging into everything we do,” she says.
Donations from both new and loyal donors are up this year, she says.
“A lot of the issues that Farm Sanctuary talks about have really come to the forefront of people’s consciousness during the pandemic. Our broken food system, factory farming, the potential for zoonotic diseases like Covid, but also issues of farmworker health are really relevant right now,” Fielding says. “The dangers and the inhumanity in our food system have really come to light.”
Leaders at Rotary International are also sticking with what’s worked in past years.
The nonprofit has an ambitious goal to raise $700,000 globally on December 1. It plans to send GivingTuesday appeals to current, lapsed, and prospective donors in 27 countries and promote the impact of its work via social media and email.
“As the GivingTuesday movement has become more global, we’ve been able to reach out to different Rotary members in different regions and help to get our mission and our programs out in front of them,” says Eric Schmelling, chief philanthropy officer. “This year, we’ll be doing videos in English, French, Italian, Japanese and Korean and Spanish, to name a few.”
For the 24-hour period, a donation page will take over Rotary’s home page, encouraging people to make one-time or recurring gifts. Donors can designate their gift to issues including clean water, maternal and child health, polio eradication, or the charity’s endowment.
Giving has been going strong this year, despite the disruptions to Rotary’s event-heavy fundraising strategy. The charity is about $1 million ahead of its fundraising a year ago.
A recent study shows that giving in the first half of 2020 has risen among all categories of donors, but especially smaller donors. The number of gifts of $250 or less was up almost 20 percent over the first half of 2019, according to data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, of which GivingTuesday is a partner.
“Grassroots giving is a huge opportunity,” says Rosenbaum. “The influx of new donors that we’re seeing in 2020 hopefully will help add resilience to the sector in the longer term.”
Other Ways to Give
Of course, people who are concerned about their finances may contribute less on GivingTuesday, he says. Nonprofits should present supporters many opportunities to take action for the causes they care about — on GivingTuesday and in general. Offering new donors a way to connect helps maintain their relationship with the cause even if they aren’t able to give right now.
Catchafire, a company that offers an online platform to match professionals who want to donate their time with nonprofits that need their skills, is encouraging people to sign up as a virtual volunteer on GivingTuesday, for example.
Whether it’s through volunteering time, giving money to a charity, or supporting a struggling local business, people are looking for ways to connect with their communities.
Staff at GivingTuesday analyze conversation on major social-media platforms to see what themes are surfacing among people planning for the giving day. This year, “community” and “justice” are the two major themes. That’s a change from past years, when “donation” and “campaign” were the dominant themes, Rosenbaum says.
“All organizations are in some way both affected and part of the fabric of recovery for communities,” he says. “If you talk about that in an open and authentic way, I think you’re going to find people are very receptive.”
