Thinking Past GivingTuesday: What to Do After a Successful Giving Day

Lynne, Okay,
welcome to thinking past Giving Tuesday. What to do after a successful Giving Day. Our presenter today is Lynne Wester, and before I hand the floor over to Lynne, I just want to cover a few housekeeping items. We do not have a handout today, but the webcast is being Read More

Lynne, Okay,
welcome to thinking past Giving Tuesday. What to do after a successful Giving Day. Our presenter today is Lynne Wester, and before I hand the floor over to Lynne, I just want to cover a few housekeeping items. We do not have a handout today, but the webcast is being recorded, and you’ll receive the recording later this week, and please make sure to add all comments, responses and questions under the questions section.
Okay, all right, so that was all I have So Lynne, the floor is yours.
Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here with you all today, we are going to be talking about post Giving Day activities. So why don’t you
sit back, relax, and if you have questions, please feel free to put them in the Q and A. I am watching the Q and A, so feel free to ask questions throughout the presentation, and we’ll spend that time together so I can make sure that I answer all of your questions. If you want to also in the chat, let us know where you’re joining us from that would be great. So the premise to this presentation is you’ve either done Giving Tuesday or had your own Giving Day, and we’re thinking about what is the behavior that you’re going to do with your donors after so post Giving Day behavior so you’ve already secured their gift. It may be that they’re a first time donor. It may be that
they have given to you regularly over the past. But what we’re going to do is really think about
what your behavior is going to be post Giving Day. So again, this is, you know, really thinking about that behavior and making sure that we feel valued, that the donor feels valued
for their giving. So welcome to all of you, and so excited to have you. So the first thing we need to do, kind of step number one, is to receipt the donor, whether that be your Canadian CRA, IRS, whatever it is, instant receipting is really important, and so you really want to make sure that you receipt your donor. So I’m going to give you some examples there. Your receipt should happen instantaneously, because, again, we’re in a Giving Day, and these gifts are going to be coming in online to us. The other thing that we want to remember is that the the receipt should mention that it is giving day. So again, you want to get in there and make sure that they know that you know that it was a Giving Day gift. So again, a different thank you or receipt than you’ve done before. I’ve given you an example here from Cornell, they run what I think is one of the best giving days. I give to their giving day every year. So again, on the left is thank you for your Giving Day gift. And then on the right is the receipt part with, of course, the necessary language. So that’s one example of a gift receipt, and I have another one. We are very fortunate at the DRG that we have been helping Maui strong and the Hawaii Community Foundation thank and and solicit donors. And so we ran a Giving Tuesday campaign, and we’ll be running another one this year. And of course, this is an example of the receipt that we send out to you, out to the donors. And so
it’s just a very simple thing. It should take on the personality of your organization. And also remember, this is probably something that your donors are going to keep and maintain for their records. So this is a really good opportunity to set a really positive
first impression, a really great opportunity for you to, you know, really connect with your donors,
and so just something that you need to do. So receipting is step one after you receipt then you want to send a personalized thank.
You to all of your donors that gave on your giving day or giving Tuesday.
You know, really something that is custom to the donor that also so again, if it’s not personalized, we really don’t want to send it. Now, remember that you’re giving Tuesday and your giving days are social,
social opportunities. So they can also mention your social media channels, things like that, things for people to connect to. But we want to keep it as simple as possible. So here’s one. Lynne comma, thank you for your Purdue gate. Day of Giving gift my mom what to produce. So I give there every year,
and I love that. So it says, you know, you can share on social media. Let’s show what happens. That’s an example of a thank you again. Two channels here that I highly recommend your thank yous come through that is digital, so email or social, but also through text. So don’t forget that text can be a very powerful channel for your thank yous to your donors. Here’s one from Tennessee. I love this one because not only does it offer me a thank you for my gift on their giving day, but it also offers a 20% discount at the bookstore. So again, a really easy way to engage with your audience. Now your thank yous, you want to get them out as soon as possible, and remember that your thank yous and your receipts are two separate things, so the receipt is for the transaction that they made on your giving site. It has the dollar amount and where the money is going to go, and the thank you is separate, right? And that thank you is going to go,
and that doesn’t have the dollar amount or any financial information, and is just all about personally thanking the donor. Now I have a question from Shannon, what if you only have the donor’s mailing address? Well, Shannon, most giving days are run digitally, but if you’re saying that you accept checks on your giving day, usually you can use an app in service to go ahead and get your donor’s email address, but if you don’t have it, then I would suggest doing this in written form. So we strongly believe that donors communications preferences are communicated to us
in the way in which they give. So the way in which they give is their strong preference for communication, right? So
you know, that’s really something that you want to think about. So if they mail you a check, then maybe you mail something to them. But most giving days and giving Tuesdays are done online, so that’s why I’m sticking mostly with digital here. Teresa asks the question, what happens if we don’t require name when they give what should you say? So actually, you have to require name by law in order to issue a tax receipt. Theresa,
you have to ask for a name. So you can keep your giving site very simple, but you do need name, zip code or postal code, credit card number and email address. So those are name is not an option, so that would be something you would want to do. So Lisa has asked, Hi, Lisa, I hope Greece is great. What do you recommend on timing for receipt versus thank you the same day as the gift for both. So ideally, if you’re going to do a Giving Day, timeliness is one of the most important things, and so
the timing of the receipt should be instantaneous. The Thank You should ideally go out within the same day or the next day. So love that question. Normally, a tax receipt goes out within 48 hours, and a thank you goes out within the first week. So absolutely
wonderful question.
Carrie says, Can we send a thank you text to someone who has not opted in to receive text, yeah, on your giving form, you could just have a box that says, I consent to having you contact me, and it text is just another contact channel. So absolutely, these are great questions. Keep them coming. I love that. Teresa says, does that pertain to any dollar amount? Yes, you need to have the donor’s name for any dollar amount. There’s in the United States, there’s actually a federal law that says that you can’t accept funds without knowing the source of those funds, so you should have your general counsel look into that for you. But yeah, you you need to know the source of those funds for that. Okay, great question. Here’s.
Another, simple, personalized thank you.
It also asks donors. Here’s how else you can be involved. So again, sharing out on social media, right? So those kinds of things, so, excellent, excellent,
excellent. Thank you there.
I love this one because it has a personality. Again. Your Giving Day is the time for you to stand out among the crowd, for you to,
you know, really have a personality. And of course, this Thank you. Has a personality. They have the Oprah meme there. You can certainly use some other meme, right? So, great one there. Shannon asked the question, Can you text via DP? Are you DP? I think that means donor, perfect, but I sure, and I’m not, I don’t know the exact answer to that, but maybe my DonorPerfect friends can answer that for me, and we can find that out for you. So absolutely.
Joe Woolsey, because the giver must provide the organization a name. You should also ask, do you prefer this? You can ask about anonymity. Joe, it’s totally up to you and your organization how you like to treat anonymity. I try not to say, Should we can should all over the place, but yes, Megan, we use stripe and do not get the information for the tax receipt on the same day of the transaction suggestions. Stripe has same day processing
capabilities, so maybe I would chat with stripe and see if you can worst case scenario that would be within 24 hours.
So, yes, so, so that’s, that’s a, that’s a great one, but I would be talking to my my stripe
representative, because I know that you can get that information same day, real time.
So yeah, and don’t forget that you’re going to get the recording and the slides of these later this week. So thank you.
So again, so our first step is a tax receipt and our second step is a thank you. Here’s some examples of thank yous on social media, and remember thank yous never, ever include $1 amount. You always include the dollar amount on the tax receipt. Never on the thank you and that is very important to understand. So it’s a very simple of understanding the role of a tax receipt and the role of a thank you note. So the role of a tax receipt is to provide tax information, and that always includes the dollar amount, kind of like when you go to a restaurant and at the end of your meal, you’re provided a receipt, but they might write thank you at the top, that’s still a receipt for the purchase that you made.
And so
you know you can, you can totally that’s your receipt, right? So
the but you would never include the dollar amount in a thank you. So you would never say dear grandma. Thank you so much for my Cabbage Patch Doll valued at 4999
because gratitude and dollar amount, they don’t mix. So that’s what the receipt is for. You never put gratitude and dollars together. So So these are examples, again, of gratitude, personalized the better, right? How do you do that? You ask them for their social media handles on your giving post, right? So again,
we really want to have them put their handles right there on your giving form, so that you can thank them on social media. Thinking on social again, if you’re running a Giving Tuesday, if you’re running a Giving Day campaign, this is really important. Social media is part of that effort. So you can just capture that right there.
I love a personalized video. So if you look over on the left hand side, that’s an example of a thank view that’s spelled exactly like it sounds, thank view.
And so thank view
is the platform that I use for personalized videos. And so really enjoy that platform, and it works really well.
So remember, the dollar amount of the gift isn’t the most important thing, correct? It’s the behavior of the donor that they have. So we don’t ever want to put dollar amount.
It’s in thank yous, it’s not good practice. So Patricia says, What if they mail a check? Would I send a receipt and a separate Thank you in the same envelope? No, you would send them in two different envelopes. So on average, we want to thank a donor seven times before asking them for money. Again, that’s best practice, according to Penelope Burke and donor centered fundraising, we need to do two things before we ask for more money. We need to say thank you, and we need to
we need to tell them how we use their money. So again, a receipt is separate from a thank you. They’re two completely separate communications, and we want them to be thing separate, thank yous. So no combining them together in the same envelope, because we’re trying to get to that seven touch point before we ask for more money. So these are all great questions, keeping them to go, keeping them going. So Jessica asked a great question. We’re planning on aiming our Giving Tuesday to grow your monthly donors. Monthly and recurring donors is fantastic. We did that with Maui strong, and we’re able to garner 10s of 1000s of dollars of recurring support. Monthly giving is my default ask for most donors, because nobody gives, you know, like people don’t pay their bills once we’re in the Netflix, the, you know, subscription economy. So Jessica, what you want to do is, number one, if Giving Tuesday is going to be your time to grow your monthly donations, fantastic. Number one, you want to make sure that you’re not tax receipting them every month, that they have a welcome series email, and that you’re set up for communications and then a tax receipt in, you know, end of January of the next year, that summarizes all their gifts. You want to make sure they’re not going through that same cycle every single month. And then also, do you have a name, and do you have the mechanics set up on your giving website? Do you have the mechanics set up with your thanking program for your monthly donor? So it is the best way to ask is monthly, Jessica, so I love that you’re thinking about that.
So, so just, just love, love that. So, excellent, excellent question. So we have a question is, does DonorPerfect generate the receipt? Yes, you can send receipts, and you can create templates for thank yous, but the receipt is automated. Lindsay, thank you is a separate software than DonorPerfect, so feel free to check it out. It’s fantastic. Here’s why you have to test your giving form, folks. So on the giving form, it says, share your gift. And so
I went and shared the gift, and this is what happened. This is not what I want to share. So you have to actually test what the sharing out looks like if you’re going to send that to donors, because this is not a good donor experience, right? I love this one. This is a thank you that I could download and share on social.
Their goal was to get 852 donors that way, and I was number 250 of 852 so what a great way to build community, right, great way to really, you know, to kind of build that community there and have everybody have their own personalized thank you. So love that personalization there. Look at this. You could do something really simple. So this is me, and they tagged me, and they put a photo of something that I have an impact, something really easy they could do with a personalized photo. There a whiteboard and some volunteers. It’s a really easy way
to do that. So again, just a simple it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Your goal is to make everyone feel special about their their donation, and to make everyone know that you’re paying attention to their giving here. Here’s another little mini video that was sent to me again, however you want to express your personality a Giving Day. Giving Tuesday is the day to have your volunteers engaged. So if you’re thinking about
what you want to do and how you want to use your volunteers, videos, handwritten notes, text, Giving Day is the time to do it. So step one is to receipt your donors. Step two is to send that personal thank you out to donors. And step three is to do a wrap up piece. And your wrap up piece needs to be timely and it needs to have information in it. You can share it on social. You can.
Email it out, and this is where you are
sending out a wrap up piece to say, here’s what you made possible, the donors made possible. Here’s what we were able to do, right? Here’s who gave, kind of just a little overview piece of the day. And this ideally should go out within 48 hours of your giving day. So get your totals together, get your information together. And you know, really,
want us to really dive into this wrap up now you only want to send the wrap up to the people who gave to your organization on your giving day or on your Giving Tuesday, right? So that’s what you want to think about, is and look at this. This is a video right? That says, hey, this is our wrap up here. Here are examples, two or three different examples, one from lit world, one from Australia, right? You can make it simple, or you can make it video. You can embed photos,
any of those kinds of things you can embed here. Now, here’s what you want to do. You want to go ahead and build out your wrap up piece now, absolutely now and then, all you’re going to do is drop the numbers in once your giving day or Giving Tuesday is over, right? So again, and it doesn’t have to be like how much money you raised. It could be how many books will be donated, or the impact so 80 animals will be spayed, or we’re able to have this many things added to our library. I would not focus on how much money you raised, and instead, you should focus on how many people donated. So you’re one of many who have really, you know, helped us, you know, move forward. And also, what is the impact of that community day, correct?
So again, this is your opportunity to wrap this up and show impact, right? I love this one that I received. First of all, they have the best Giving Day name, right? So
this is from Oregon State, and theirs is called damn proud day because they’re the beavers. But what I love in this one is it also has a survey here and express feedback. Did you have a good experience or a not so good experience? Right? So again, this is from,
this is from, for your donors, you may want to do something for social for the general public, but the one thing you don’t want to do, and I get this all the time, is, after somebody has a Giving Day, or after giving Tuesday, they say, Oh, thank you for your gift. This is what you helped accomplish. And I’m like, I didn’t give. So you have to segment out your audiences. That’s really important. So we’ve got Step one is to receipt our donors. Step two is to thank them personally. Step three is to give an impact report or a capsule of the day, right? So Bree says, If recurring donations come in on your giving day, do you include them in your giving day numbers? Absolutely, I include them. Bri, I think the more the better, right?
Let’s see. This will be the first year that we’re reaching out to our monthly donors on Giving Tuesday. Lenore, for an extra gift. Ooh, so we don’t want to ask them for an extra gift. What we want to do is ask them for an increase on their monthly giving. So don’t ask them for an additional gift. You want to say, we and I have an example, I believe in here, of recurring donors. So again, we want to ask them for an increase on their gift, not for an additional gift. So great question. Very timely. So step four, we want to report back to our donors what the impact of their gift was. Now, some places spend money faster than others. Nobody spends money that same week, month, even quarter, almost. So that’s why we have to report back to the donors what we did with their gift. I say,
excuse me, no, no sooner than three months.
I try not to let it go longer than six months. Six months is a good time. You know, we didn’t. We know what you did six months ago. We’re so proud. And here’s the results, because in order to.
Get future donations, you have to do two things. You have to thank the donor, and then second, you have to tell them what their money did. So many organizations
raise money on Giving Tuesday,
and
they do not
report back what the money did. So Kathleen, giving you some advice here, had good success with asking monthly donors to either or either increase their donation or do a one time pop up gift. I love that, Kathleen, but we have to acknowledge that they’re monthly donors first, so I wouldn’t just ask for a second gift, right? So love that. So here is, here are some examples of reporting back, right? So your donation has made a lasting impact by helping them achieve and here’s what we did, right? So again, what is the impact? So they sent me this first part, and now they’re telling me about different students stories who were impacted by the
nonprofit, by the
so love that love the fact that they are telling me what happened with the gift and the impact it had. Again, the best way that we can tell impact is not through numbers. The numbers belong in your wrap up. So that’s what the numbers are for here. But the impact is about storytelling. So love those stories. Here’s one. So if your Giving Tuesday goes to a specific
fund or a specific project. So this one, I helped support the wheelchair basketball team, and this is a very simple example of an impact report. Hey, because of you, we were able to purchase much needed rehab and prehab equipment for our student athletes. And then once our equipment is purchased, we’re going to show you what we did with it. Love that very easy way to demonstrate impact. But again, what did my money do at your organization. What is the before and after now? I love this one. This came with the subject line of, we know what you did six months ago. I thought that was great. And it says, And you know what? You’re pretty special. Six months ago, you gave a gift your fourth year in a row. I love that. It points out how many years in a row I’ve given and it says you’ve seen firsthand what happens, and then take a look at what helped you, what you’ve helped accomplish, right? So love that, because it helps me look at, here’s what we’ve done over time, and here’s what we’ve been able to do as a result of your support, right? So Diane asks you, wouldn’t want to share campaign results in your socials to everyone that can see them, as opposed to just sharing the wrap up with donors. I might want to share that with everyone else Diane, but I would be careful with that, because, you know, they might say, well, then they have plenty of money and they don’t need it. So when I ask year end, they may not want that, but I would also understand the need for the donors to hear it first,
the donors to hear it first, and then the general public. So I love that crystal says, wrap up. Is number of donors, or, you know kind of what this is going to do, or yay, celebrate the report back is, what did we do with the money? Crystal, what did we do with the money? We can put potential impact in the wrap up, but until it’s realized, we don’t know what we’re going to do. Do you know what I mean? So I love this one is one of my favorites. So this says all from an impact, all from a student story, all shot on a video by the student. And I love having a multimedia approach, right? So love this idea of sending out, right? So love that. So again, you know, this was a general ask, and, you know, went to student support. So again, something really simple to do. Susan, a lot of campaigns are based on a project to raise for a specific thing.
What if you just need to continue to raise for a program that you have always run and need to continue run, then you raise money for it, but you have to show me the impact of that program, right? So, yeah, that that’s you can do that all the time, right? So again, because of you, we’ve awarded more life changing scholarships tackled four.
Food insecurity, added valuable resources, restored a meat and memorial and much more. Below is the video. So again, really connecting the outcome with you know what you’ve done to for the money? And again, I need to know that you’ve spent the money because you’re going to come along and ask me for more money later, and I need to know that you’ve done something with it right,
follow up with a survey. So how many of you are doing surveys as part of your regular donor relations communications? If you haven’t yet grasped surveying as one of the best ways to communicate with your donors, I highly encourage you to do a survey now. Doesn’t have to be a massive survey. Doesn’t have to be, you know, like earth shattering, right?
And instead, can really, really, you know, be organic and be simple to execute, right?
So I’ll give you. So this is a simple way. Here’s another one. Will you take a moment to give your feedback about our day of giving your feedback will help us continue to improve. Now, if you’re going to survey your audience, you’re going to want to ask three to five questions. Maximum, maximum three to five questions. And I’m going to give you some of the questions that you may want to ask your donors before I move on. Number one, did you have a good giving experience? Right? So, did you have a good giving experience? And you want to have them answer that on a Likert scale, which is, you know, very much so to somewhat so to not, right? Those five Likert is, L, i, k, e, r t, if you’re looking on how to survey, it has the five options, and you answer those another survey question you might want to ask, How frequently do you want to hear from us? So we asked that of our Maui strong donors, because we had a plan to connect with them every quarter, and they actually told us that they wanted to hear from us monthly. So we changed our pattern from quarterly to monthly.
And then we also asked, What topics were they most interested in? You could ask donors, What channel do they want to receive their follow up in anything along those lines, what you don’t want to ask is, A, any question that you can’t deliver on, B, something that’s not within your control, right? But surveys, if you want to get your donors engaged, surveys are a fantastic way to do that. Texting, if you haven’t already taken to texting as a channel. I highly encourage you to text your donors. This is text from Team Rubicon. They’re one of the leaders in donor relations. I love
their post gift communications. So if you haven’t yet texted your donors, most 97% of text messages are opened and read within three minutes of receiving them. Now
in the United States, I would wait a couple weeks, wink wink, before I texted donors, because our texts, depending on where you live in the United States, are getting quite hot and heavy lately. I will not mention what’s happening, but it will be over soon, in a couple weeks, but boy, are texts a great way to reach out to people. Otherwise, those those folks wouldn’t be using them, if you know what I mean. So text, I love a text. I love a postcard as well. Now, for those of you in the United States, if you’re going to use direct mail, meaning if you’re going to mail to people at the end of the year, I want to give you a tip,
a hint,
A is that if you’re going to send direct mail, you need to sign up for informed daily digest riders. So as you can see, anytime you mail out a direct mail piece, you can also send a digital rider or digital donate now button with it. It’s free of charge for the United States Postal Service. And again, this is for my American folks. 67%
of people who have informed daily digest check it every single day. It’s one of the most successful launches that we’ve ever seen when it comes to communicating with people. So here’s an example from Red Cross, and here’s an example from St Jude. So ride along images if you need to know how to do that, there’s it’s free, but there’s tons of services that can teach you how to do this. I highly write.
Recommend this. I can’t tell you how it helps your direct mail cut through the noise of what can be in people’s inboxes. Brina, Brina, I hope what’s a good service to use for texting. I’ve used mongoose before and had a really good experience with it. Laura, I don’t know the question about DonorPerfect. I’m gonna let my DonorPerfect teammate answer that, Donna. It’s Donna from Niagara. What could be a few of the most common mistakes for those of us getting ready for a first Giving Tuesday,
not asking for specific
projects, so just having an ask out there support us. Giving Tuesday can be crowded, not getting into people’s inboxes early enough. So most successful people wake up between five and 7am
so
that is something that you need to get in their inbox before 5am
and let’s see other mistakes. Your monthly giving should be your default option for giving.
And if you really want a successful
Giving Tuesday, you’re bored and them spreading the word is really important. So love that Susan, it’s called informed Daily Digest, digital ride along. It’s informed Daily Digest, yes, love it, love it, love it, love it. That’s great. Okay,
okay, so for those of you who already have monthly giving
this is brilliant. So for those of you who already have monthly giving
programs, then your giving days are the opportunity to ask for increased support. Some folks also ask for an additional gift, but I actually think that increasing my monthly gift is the way to ask for my current monthly donors. Now, some of you have said, let’s see. Cecilia has said You mentioned a welcome series email for monthly giving, one email or letter thanking them for their monthly gift and one tax receipt. Yes. So I teach donor behavior based donor relations. So Cecilia, that means that regardless of the amount of donation, amount of the person who donates, then that doesn’t matter. What matters is their behavior. So first time donors, loyal donors, monthly donors, and so I have a thanking behavior set up for each journey. So a first time donor goes on a different journey than a loyal donor does then.
Then maybe a
person who increases their gift does things like that. So each behavior has a journey. So once somebody signs up for monthly giving and again on Giving Tuesday, on your Giving Day, monthly giving should be your number one ask, right? Of course they can opt out and give a single gift, but ideally you want people giving monthly because their retention rate is 90%
versus your normal first time donor. Retention Rate covers between 23 to 25% so boo there. I want them to sign up for monthly gifts, but I want to welcome them with like a welcome email. Then I probably want to talk to them about once a quarter, but I want to make sure that they’re taken out of all my other solicitations. I want to take them out of any like nuisance communications, because monthly giving is really set it and forget it, right? Like I really want them to have the feeling that we’re in a streamlined organization now, in the beginning of the year, I want to do a comprehensive tax receipt, usually by january 30, that shows all their gifts from the previous year. And this would be the same if you had someone on payroll deduction, or am EFT any of those same thing as monthly giving, right? And so
that’s a really great option, and I want to do communications that are just for them. The expert on monthly giving. Look, folks, there’s a lot of people who claim to be experts. The only expert I ever listened to is Erica wasdorp W A, A, S D O R P. Erika wasdorp W A, A, S D O R P. She is the authority on monthly giving. She gives you all the tips on how to execute it. She has a book you can.
Get off Amazon. Erica is who I listen to, kind of like Russell James. Is that for plan giving? I’m that for donor relations. Erica wasdorp. Is it for monthly giving? So but here’s the thing about monthly giving, you want to make sure that you have the mechanics for monthly getting set up correctly before you go out and ask for monthly gifts. So there’s my tip for you. Greta, asked you see pushback when making monthly giving giving the default option. I have not seen pushback, Greta, I have seen nothing but people who are like, Yay, it’s about time. But we have to make sure that we have the mechanics to bring that money in the door and to steward it. So Jan says our give fest is once a year in early October. Wonderful.
How soon to send out mailers, emails, etc? Well, if it’s the same time frame every year, then you should be able to get ahead of it.
Most donors are what we call like in the moment donors, but they need to have multiple reminders.
So I would start probably six weeks out, and I would do a ramp up to your give fest day, knowing that, for example, like direct mail takes time for it to get there, and everybody’s direct mail is different. You know, I’d probably for my digital donors, I’d do a direct mail piece, but I would not give them an envelope. I’d drop them a postcard with QR codes, something like that, and then I’d start my email series leading up to that. So I love this question.
So yeah, love that. Joy Miller writes Cash App slash Venmo. Is that a question? Joy, you’re gonna have to, you’re you’re gonna have to give me more information than that. I’m sorry. I I don’t know what that means when you just put two vendors down there in the comments. I’m happy to ask if you have a question there. So
yeah. So Terry says, How many weeks prior to giving Tuesday do you recommend starting the ask?
I wouldn’t start the Ask earlier than giving Tuesday, but I would definitely start communicating. You know, giving season.
Giving season happens, you know,
I would say 70% of our gifts, 80% of our gifts are given in November and December. So that’s really important.
So you know, you want to be prepared and ready for that. So love that. Theresa says, What is a good platform or software to take monthly donations? I love give butter. Give butter is fantastic. You may have it built in to other places, but give butter was the first to take Venmo. I think they do such a fantastic job. It’s who we used for Maui strong.
I can’t say enough good things about them. I’m probably going to, I don’t mean to get in trouble, but you asked, so that’s my opinion. There’s plenty of them out there that take monthly donations, but they’re my favorite.
So yes, let’s see Heather, you mentioned teaching donor behavior strategies. How can we access what you teach? Oh, that’s nice. You can go to donor relations.com
there’s 15,000 samples there for free that you can download. There’s webinars, all kinds of instruction on my YouTube channel, on LinkedIn, you can follow me, and all the knowledge is there, and it’s very accessible. So we try to make most of it free or affordable, depending on what your resources are. So that’s a great question, and thank you for asking. Sky. We have a small, small following on social media. Any ideas on how to leverage our current following to get them to re share our posts leading up to Giving Tuesday? Yeah, so most nonprofits don’t have large followings on social media because social media is a tool, and it’s a communication channel that is highly laborious and doesn’t always have the ROI that you think it does. So I think the first thing I would do is, rather than just tap into your social media following, I’m betting that your email list is better. So I would go out to my email list and have them share on social before I went to social and had them share. So that’s what I would do.
And so I think that’s a great question, but I would we know that people take more action, and you got to give them a clear action to take, and what you.
Want them to do. So love, love, love, love that question, and think it’s really important for you to think about. So here are our steps to success. I love all these questions going to keep them going, but I wanted to wrap up in case somebody needs to go somewhere. But we receipt instantly. We thank individually, we’re going to send a wrap up piece. We’re going to use our social strategically, but we have to also report back on the use of funds. And look, folks, if being involved in Giving Tuesday or doing a giving day is going to tax your organization too much, or it’s going to take away from your year end giving, or you feel that you can’t do this. Of,
you know, if you feel that you can’t do this staff wise, or you don’t have the resources, then better to not take it on and instead focus on year end, right? So you know, know your know who you are, know your resources, you know, but also know your limits. It’s okay not to be involved in giving day. It’s okay Tuesday, it’s okay to take a step back. But what is never going to get old is the fundamentals, good donor stewardship, good asking will lead to good results. So I just don’t want you to feel like giving days. You have to do them, and you have to throw doing a Giving Day. Well, it’s october 22 if you’re just starting planning, you need to skip this year for giving Tuesday. It’s too late. I would say, if you’re just starting, I usually we do Giving Tuesday campaigns for folks as consultants, and we start that in July. So yeah, just being really honest, really,
really, you know, straightforward with you. If you can’t do it, well, don’t do it. I would rather see you do it really well, then do something that’s half, kind of half half there. So okay, resources, there’s the website. So I’m going to dive into the questions the Q and A. As you can tell, I’m very honest,
very straightforward. So feel free again, my areas of specialty are post giving, giving days. You know, donor relations, all of that good stuff. So let’s see.
I’m gonna dig down in here. Okay, here we go.
Katie Craig, would you recommend including the Giving Tuesday donors and holiday appeals? No. So here’s the thing we know, that the number one reason why donors don’t give again Katie is because they’re asked too often and too frequently for support. So if I give on Giving Tuesday, which I think this year is like December 3, hold on.
Gotta go find it. I think it’s December 3. It is give. December 3 is giving Tuesday. I really shouldn’t be asked again, right? I need to get to know you. We need to build a relationship. Far too soon for you to ask me for money. You know, I think that there are a lot of people that give out advice that are like, Well, you gotta hurry up and get the second gift. You are doing that at the detriment of your own
of your own retention and of your donor experience. So please, please, please, please, please, please, don’t do that. Instead, send some stewardship communications and things and try to get to learn and know your donors. So love that, Jessica. We are part of a university, and they send out all the tax receipts at year end. Oh god, that’s criminal. We have
a large amount of monthly donors. We send out all thank you notes. And knowing that, should we include the dollar amount in the Thank you, no, but I don’t understand any reason why they would be ever sending out tax receipts at year end, they should be sending them out instantly. That is not best practice, and I think that that is going to cause a lot of angst with your donors. So,
yeah, sorry to hear that. I would try to get that changed. That’s really bad practice. I would have them benchmark with other organizations. I understand if they want to do a summary in January, but
not not everyone, all at the same time. I would be really upset by that, actually, as a donor, because I run a business, and so I file taxes quarterly.
So that wouldn’t work for me. I’d be like, where’s my receipt? So Jennifer, is it best practice to have a specific use for GT funds? Or can we just share that we’re raising funds via Giving Tuesday for our nonprofit? So Jennifer, you know best practice is relative. It’s about what works for your organization. We know that specific asks do.
Raise more money than general asks. So
you know, the more specific you can make your ask, the better, right? So again,
you know, so our gifts on Giving Tuesday are going to go to X program, or our gifts on Giving Tuesday are going to go to this that will raise you more money than please give us money. It’s giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday isn’t really a reason to do that.
And so that’s, that’s, you know, giving Tuesday isn’t in its own a reason to give. So I would be careful there, just like you, existing as a nonprofit isn’t a reason for a donor to give. We need specific
reasons for people to give tangible things that they can have an outcome. So Anita says, Do QR codes expire or are they reusable? For instance, if we send a QR postcard in November, the person gives, can they use the same card to give again in December or weeks later, they could it depends on what QR code service you’re using. Everybody uses different services. You could also add a bitly or a shortened URL,
and so, yeah, totally,
totally up to you.
So love that. Yeah.
Audra will skip Giving Tuesday and go with end of year giving. We have an event at the end of February, event,
careful with events. Remember, on average they cost 50 to 60 cents to raise $1 they run your staff off and just ROI on events, but that’s not the topic for today. Thoughts on including the end of year donors in event digital appeals. So Audra, understand there’s two types of people. There’s event attendees and there’s donors, and they’re not the same. So
event attendees and donors are not the same that you have event attendees and then you have donors. So just because I give at year end doesn’t mean that
that I would,
yeah, events are very frustrating. If I could tell any fledgling nonprofit one hint it would be never have an event to raise money. You can have an event to thank donors. You can have event to give tours, but events to raise money don’t work so well. They they aren’t efficient, and you could spend all that time doing other things. So any expert in fundraising will tell you that
Ellen says, What do you think about a Giving Tuesday campaign that would help hard launch our online giving platform. We’re a new nonprofit. Congratulations. Just started to accept gifts online. I think that’s great. And it says follow up point. The general theme would be getting on the ground floor with what we’re doing, starting a transitional housing facility. I love that. I would tell you right now, if it were me, not only would I hard launch my giving site. I would be hard launching my monthly giving club or my monthly giving whatever effort, whatever it is, I would hard default to monthly gifts, because if you’re starting transitional housing, there’s never a time when transitional housing isn’t going to have a need. And so I would be thinking about, you know, how do we communicate to our donors that our folks have a need and that, you know, those things are really important. Do you know what I mean? So,
yeah.
So does that make sense?
So yeah,
yeah, I love some of you who are like, I’m going to skip Giving Tuesday. You know, some people it works really well for and some people it doesn’t. So understand that mindset and understand the energy that you’re going to have to put out in order to do it correctly. And by correctly, it could be just at top, top Effort, Right?
Susan, is there any better time of year to launch a monthly giving campaign outside of your giving day? Yes, end of year, end of year, end of year, end of year, end of year, or something that ties to your organization. It should make sense, right? But end of year, because that’s when people are are have their wallets open for the most
so Teresa, I found out that DonorPerfect does have a texting plan. So if you’re on DonorPerfect,
you know, go ahead and go ahead and check out their information for you. Mackenzie, can you give an example of how to do an ask for an existing program or keep, get a program running for giving Tuesday?
Keep, get a program.
Am running.
So that’s a solicitation. I’m more talking about end of so once you’ve given the ask, Mackenzie, what to do with your donors. After all, you know, if you want to learn about asking, I would say Tom Ahern, Lisa Sargent, Clay buck,
there’s tons of folks who are
fantastic at that. Lisa Sargent, Tom Ahern, Clay buck, those are just three that roll off the tip of my brain in terms of asking for money.
Okay, I got Susan’s question. Sorry, trying to keep up with all of you in the chat,
we are going to send a recording and the slide, so don’t worry about that. Oh, Chantel agrees with me about events, yes, so much effort, so much risk, so little reward, right? So,
again, the least efficient way to raise $1 is through events, and the most efficient way to run off your staff is through events. So if you want to lose staff, that’s a great way to do it. Have events.
Let’s see. Oh, in Colorado,
we have Colorado gives day, which is the beginning of December. That sounds like giving Tuesday. How can we do a campaign for both Colorado gives day and a year end appeal? That’s a great question faith. So here’s the thing.
So faith these year end giving is your Super Bowl. It the end of year is when, I mean, we should be, have been planning for end of year giving since August. So if, if a Giving Tuesday, or Colorado gives day is going to take away your effort and your energy from end of year giving, then don’t do it right. But you’re not going to get donor fatigue. But donors that give through giving days and donors that give through traditional methods like direct mail or phone a thons or your other efforts, right? May be two different audiences, so I want you to make sure that one isn’t cannibalizing the other, right? And so
you know, just, just something to think about is, is that the best time for you to ask? Because I can tell you the end of the year is where I’d be putting, you know, my efforts,
whereas I’d put Giving Tuesday on a sit on us, on a project I wouldn’t whereas end of years when you’re funding your organization, really, yeah, great, great question. Just trying to Yeah.
So,
yeah,
absolutely,
yeah.
Let’s see. So the goal is to gain new donors. Okay, so if you’re using Giving Tuesday or Colorado gives day as acquisition, that’s fine, but then year end should be minded towards retention, right? So yes,
remember your best future donors are your past donors, right? So
Mackenzie asks if email is successful as direct mail, Mackenzie, you’re gonna hate this answer. It depends. So depends on your audience, depends on what you’re asking for. Remember, you know, almost 80% of our money in the United States still comes in through direct mail. So digital fundraising is huge, but it still only brings in 17% of the money. So keep that in mind. You all have been the most amazing audience. I’m so grateful to DonorPerfect for giving us this time together. You can reach me at donor relations.com
and I wish, no matter what you do, I wish that you all have the greatest Giving Tuesday, Giving Day, end of year experience, and remember that being giving gratitude to the donors you already have is more important than chasing donors you don’t yet have, so I hope you keep that in mind as you plan for the end of your year. So thank you again for everything, and so I hope to chat with you soon. Please feel free to reach out on social via email. Thank you all so much, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for DonorPerfect. You.