Leveraging Your Giving Day Goals

The most successful Giving Day campaigns begin with setting clear goals. But why not just dive in and start creating your fundraising profile or writing donor communications? The answer is simple. Setting initial goals helps your team paint a clear picture of your fundraising objectives so expectations can be met and donors and fundraisers know how to best support your initiatives.

While there are many types of Giving Day goals, yours should be based on what your organization needs. With thousands fundraising through GiveGab, we see lots of different goals. Where do we recommend you begin? Start with the following list of what we see most often:

Popular Giving Day Goals 

• Total Dollars Raised
• Number of Donors (i.e. total donors and/or new donors)
• Board Engagement and Alumni Engagement
• Social Media Engagement

Once your team has selected a couple of goals for your campaign, it’s time to develop your Giving Day game plan. Our team at GiveGab is committed to helping you leverage the platform to achieve your goals. Below we’ve outlined key strategies for our most common goals to help you get started!

Reach Your ‘Total Dollars Raised’ Goal

1. Display a goal on your Giving Day profile: By displaying a monetary goal on your organization or group’s profile, donors will be more likely to give at a higher level because they will be able to see their gift work in real-time.
2. Set up donation levels: Increase your average gift size and help donors visualize their impact by setting up suggested donation levels related to your programming or services.
   • Pro tip: The psychology of giving suggests that people tend to give in the middle, so make sure to set up a few donation levels and target the mid-range gift amount to reflect your goal for average gift size.
3. Segment your donor data for communication: When reaching out to your donors for your Giving Day campaign, make sure to use the data you have on hand to encourage your existing donor base to give a little more than they have before. Don’t forget to use the toolkit on your Giving Day site to craft emails to these donors.
   • Pro tip: If you have participated in a Giving Day before, download your donation report and segment your donors based on what they gave last year – asking them to increase their gift this year.

Reach Your ‘Number of Donors’ Goal

1. 1. Engage Peer-to-Peer (P2P) fundraisers: Broaden your reach during your Giving Day by enlisting your biggest supporters to help you. We’ve found on GiveGab that, on average, one P2P fundraiser brings in 4 new donors per campaign. 

1. 1. Who should you ask to be a P2P fundraiser? Ask your board members, staff, students, alumni, volunteers, low-capacity donors, major donors who have already given for the year, and/or friends & family with a large social media presence.
   2. How many P2P fundraisers should you have? There is not a specific number of fundraisers that will guarantee success for your campaign. Instead, focus on creating a smaller group of quality fundraisers dedicated to creating and promoting their P2P campaigns. Don’t forget to provide your fundraisers with a link to help them build the perfect P2P campaign.

Reach Your ‘Board and/or Alumni Engagement’ Goals

1. 1. Activate your board & alumni connections to secure a match or challenge: By engaging your board and alumni when looking to set up a match or challenge, you provide them an opportunity to leverage their connections while supporting your cause. Not only will this increase internal involvement and investment in your Giving Day campaign, the match component will also help you incentivize more donors to give – a double win!
   2. Ask your board & alumni to be P2P Fundraisers: A great strategy for reaching more donors in general, P2P fundraising is an easy and fun way to get board members and alumni involved. By sharing their stories and connection with your organization or group, they can help expand your supporter network to help raise funds.
      • Pro tip: If your board members or alumni are not super tech-savvy, create a group P2P page for them. Provide them with their P2P Fundraiser link and suggested copy so they can share directly with their networks.

Reach Your ‘Social Media Engagement’ Goals

1. 1. Create your own social media content: No one knows your audience better than you, so crafting your own social media posts will help you stand out and engage your donors. It helps to post a few times on your main social media channels leading up to, during, and after the day.
      You can post about how to give, where to give, how close you are to your goals, and ‘thank you’ messages to create excitement around your campaign. The day-of will be busy. Feel empowered to draft social media content ahead of time to reduce stress on your Giving Day.
      • Pro tip: You are not alone – utilize the toolkit on your Giving Day site as a starting point and add your own visuals and a direct link to your donation page.
   2. Share content from your peers: Piggybacking off other social media posts is always a great way to increase engagement and show support for your peers. It also saves you work and time! Share content relevant to the Giving Day from the host organization, other participating groups, and P2P fundraisers!
      • Pro tip: Find relevant social media posts to share by watching the Tint social media feed at the bottom of your Giving Day homepage!
   3. Get in front of the camera and livestream:
      If you have the capacity, try livestreaming during the Giving Day – it is a great way to stay at the top of the social media algorithm. Through Livestreaming, you can provide updates around your goals in real-time and share impact stories about what donations can accomplish for your cause. If you cannot livestream yourself, try sharing any content posted by your Giving Day host, or their landing page for GiveGab Live.

Achieving your fundraising goals can be simple with GiveGab. We are here to help your organization or group be successful, and we are committed to providing a platform that helps you do just that. By planning your Giving Day goals early, you will have plenty of time to leverage all the platform has to offer you for success. And don’t forget, we are always here to help you – write into GGChat to speak to our team of experts. Happy planning!