What Do Highly Successful Giving Day Hosts Do Differently?
At GiveGab, we’ve worked with a variety of organizations for cause-based, regional, and higher education Giving Days.
With many more of these exciting days on the horizon, we wanted to use what we’ve learned from each of them to shed light on what some of the most highly successful ones have done differently from the rest.
Let’s take a look at four things that set these success stories apart!
1. Celebrate
A Giving Day is a 24-hour giving event that typically happens only once a year. If you’re not gearing up for it as you would for something like the Super Bowl (or other exciting yearly event), then you’re not doing it right! To get people excited about the day, many hosts turn their Giving Day kickoff into a party or celebration.
All Giving Days through GiveGab have a “kickoff” or website launch, where one or two of our project managers walk the hosts and their participants through their official Giving Day website. This launch includes learning the following:
- How to navigate the website
- How to set up their giving profiles
- How to recruit fundraisers or “fundraising champions“
- How to promote themselves using their Nonprofit Toolkit
- How to get their board members involved
- How to attend free webinars and workshops
- And much more!
All of these things are great for getting folks ready for the big day, BUT every highly successful Giving Day host knows that this is not EVERYTHING!
Highly successful hosts also go above and beyond to turn the initial kick-off into an actual celebration or party. They do this by hosting a live event or get-together for all who are involved with the day to attend and enjoy.
Our best example of this is one of our new Giving Day partners from San Antonio, The Big Give SA. They have a history of highly successful Giving Days, and upon partnering with GiveGab as their new technology provider, they invited our co-founders to their live kick-off party, greeting us with a live band and confetti!
#biggive2017 kicking off like a hurricane! Thanks for bringing the energy, Sam Houston High! pic.twitter.com/tZl0LSYWbO
— The Big Give SA (@TheBigGiveSA) January 18, 2017
2. Promote
Another thing that we’ve seen these hosts do is promote not only the Giving Day but the Giving Day participants as well! They might do this on their various
social media channels, in a newsletter, or across different mediums. They may even promote their success from the previous year’s Giving Day to inspire folks to have the same or greater success this time around.
A great example of this comes from the incredible team behind The Big Give SA. They did something called “#twittertalktuesday” where they shared quick and useful facts about their upcoming Giving Day and also promoted a giving profile of a participant and a fundraiser to provide models of how others
can customize their profiles.
Screenshot from Big Give SA on Twitter:
Making Giving Day participants feel good about being involved in the upcoming day will help motivate them to put more energy into marketing themselves and their cause to their supporters and their community!
Another great example from Big Give SA was a Facebook promotion of one of their Giving Day participants.
Screenshot from Big Give SA on Facebook:
3. Localize
Hosts that organize a local Giving Day event give participants, their supporters, AND members of the local community (i.e., new potential donors) something to look forward to that they can be a part of, regardless of whether or not they decide to make a donation on that day.
Fun local events can include things like handing out large checks as Giving Day prizes throughout the day, which can easily generate media attention and exposure.
An example of this comes from The Big Share, a Giving Day for nonprofit members of Community Shares of Wisconsin!
Some hosts will even organize an event at a local space like a brewery, winery, or another favorite gathering place.
4. Motivate
Along with highlighting participants, successful Giving Day hosts keep them and anyone else involved throughout the community informed and excited leading up to and throughout the day. Commonly this is accomplished through awarding prizes.
An excellent example of motivating rewards comes from The Amazing Give, whose Giving Day was from March 29-30, 6PM-6PM.
For example, they awarded the organization with the most engaged board members during The Amazing Give. This and other prize examples are available in the screenshots below:
Have you been part of a Giving Day celebration? What was done to help make the day successful and what do you think could be implemented to make it better in the future?
