Don’t Let Giving Tuesday Pass You By!
It’s the most wonderful (and busiest) time of the year! For school administrators, the final two months of the calendar year can be the most hectic – between the end of fall sports, the start of winter sports, parent-teacher conferences, annual fund kickoffs, high school open houses, and all the multitude of special holiday events that fill our calendars. For many Catholic school administrators, the countdown to Christmas Break starts before Thanksgiving break begins.
Nestled right in the middle of all this end-of-year chaos is a big opportunity for your school to expand its ripples of philanthropic giving and invite people to support your mission. GivingTuesday is Tuesday, November 28, 2023, and billed as “a global movement to unleash the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.”
This is the 11th year for GivingTuesday, and it has helped raise billions of dollars for non-profit organizations worldwide. The USCCB expanded on the #GivingTuesday theme with #iGiveCatholic, and provides a platform for several dioceses. Still, any parish, school, or non-profit listed in the Official Catholic Directory can participate. (for a fee). Important note: The deadline for registration to use #iGiveCatholic is November 3, 2023, so time is running out.
NCEA also organizes “Many Gifts, One Nation – A Day of Giving to Catholic Schools.” This event runs Tuesday, November 14th and Wednesday, November 15th.
However, you do not need to partner with another organization or donor platform to be successful on GivingTuesday. You can use your current online donor platform to solicit gifts, and they likely also have tools you can use to make a GivingTuesday event a success. The important thing is you need to be clear on what your GivingTuesday campaign will support. Some schools use the day to fund a specific opportunity or need. Many others incorporate it as part of their Annual Fund. (ISPD prefers this approach, if that is applicable).
- GivingTuesday is a great digital giving opportunity.
- GivingTuesday is a perfect opportunity to leverage your digital platforms. Put your email lists, text messaging lists, and social media to work. GivingTuesday is also a wonderful way to grow your donor base and capture those all-important email addresses and social follows.
- Make it an “all-day event.”
- Work up an hour-by-hour calendar of “events” for GivingTuesday. Do you have a major donor willing to provide a matching gift(s)? You can use these gifts to create a “matching gift hour” to encourage gifts to “double their donation” during that hour. Have an email blast ready to send just before that matching gift hour goes live. Follow up with updates on how close you are to the goal with a social media post at the bottom of the hour and a last-minute text message with 10 minutes to go.
- Get your students involved.
- Showcase your mission by creating a short video to post to social media. Showcase how your school/parish will use those monetary gifts. Students are already great for saying “thank you” in a video message afterward. You can also involve your students directly in the giving by donating to support your GivingTuesday campaign or pay it forward by raising funds for another local non-profit organization.
- Utilize social sharing/peer-to-peer fundraising tools if your vendor offers them.
- A peer-to-peer fundraising tool allows parents, parishioners, and alumni to create “mini-fundraising” campaigns to share with their family, friends, or classmates.
- Offer an offline giving opportunity.
- Older donors are not always comfortable donating online. Have a team of volunteers who can take a donation over the phone – or even go the classic telethon route – take a pledge and send them a commitment/payment card.
- Take the time to say thanks – especially to new donors.
- You never know where that next major gift could come from one of those peer-to-peer donors. While online giving platforms likely give you a way to generate a receipt automatically, a personal thank you, or phone call to the donor could go a long way to help secure future gifts.
If all this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. Start with what you can do and grow it from there. You can pick your day if you don’t feel you can organize a campaign for this year’s GivingTuesday. It’s also never too early to plan for #GivingTuesday 2024.
*The ISPD November 2023 newsletter was written by Jason Crundwell, ISPD associate, and president of Crundwell Digital Marketing in Mansfield, OH