6 New and Creative Giving Tuesday Ideas

Giving Tuesday, the global day of giving, is a time for fundraising professionals to make their mark. We’re bringing you a spark of inspiration to connect your cause with donors in new ways ahead of the busiest giving season of the year with new Giving Tuesday fundraising ideas.

The momentum behind the Giving Tuesday movement continues to build as nonprofits around the globe bring in more donations year after year.

In 2020, donations increased by a staggering 94 percent from that of 2019, despite the pandemic. Some would even say the pandemic fueled charitable giving, which is evident when we break down the Giving Tuesday 2020 numbers on the Classy giving platform alone:

• $37,911,122 raised
• 291,991 donations made
• 19,832 recurring donations processed

This year we’re back again to help you crush your fundraising goals with the proper preparation, direction, and creativity. Get ready to engage your supporters, inspire your community to take action, and maximize the impact of Giving Tuesday with these six fundraising ideas.

6 New and Creative Giving Tuesday Fundraising Ideas

In 2021, donors were most likely to hear about new causes and issues to support through word of mouth from friends or family, followed by direct outreach from an organization. That’s why these new ideas will center around the theme of community-building to organically engage, retain, and excite donors well into the new year.

1. Build Community Through Social Media

Many of today’s donors are leaning on their inner circles to learn about new causes to give to. This presents an opportunity for social fundraising.

Nonprofits can communicate powerful messages about their Giving Tuesday goals through social media. Take this simple approach to make a more significant impact on a day when donors are eager and ready to get involved.

If you don’t know where to start or what to post, we’ve got you covered.

Creative Social Media Ideas to Consider for Giving Tuesday

• Build exclusivity: Treat all Giving Tuesday donors as “members” of this year’s Giving Tuesday fundraising initiative. Incentivize anyone who donates with special apparel, perks, or event access. Incentives keep donors excited while simultaneously fueling organic social sharing. You can think of this in the same way a unique coffee cup on one person’s Instagram story can lead to four other people heading to the coffee shop where they got it.
• Make it easy to share: Offer supporters templates for stories, captions, and videos to share on their social channels. Include some key talking points to help elevate donors’ captions about why donations are critical to the success of this campaign. Reshare content in real-time for maximum effect on Giving Tuesday by providing a unique hashtag to donors.
• Track and reward sharing: Offer incentives to people who refer their friends and family to donate, just like many popular brands do today to grow their networks. Provide your supporters with unique links that you can track to keep tabs on the success of this referral system. With Classy, you can make use of our marketing source codes to create custom links for individuals. In these links, you can create source code values like:

Source 1 = Instagram; Source 2 = Giving-Tuesday-Community-Outreach

Send your supporters their custom link, then remind them to include it in every outreach attempt. Make it easy by equipping them with digital assets to promote your campaign to their networks.

2. Ignite the Power of a Peer-to-Peer Campaign

Your Giving Tuesday campaign is a platform to share your story in a compelling way and build connections that extend beyond that single instance. Beyond social sharing, take donors to a campaign page that allows them to put their unique spin on your fundraising efforts to bring in more donors.

On the Classy platform, the average peer-to-peer fundraising campaign raises $22,026 and pulls in about 18 donors per individual or team fundraising page within the campaign.

When someone fundraises on your nonprofit’s behalf, their family and friends are more likely to donate on Giving Tuesday, even if they have no former knowledge of your nonprofit. Launching a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign is a prime opportunity for your nonprofit to boost fundraising totals this year and beyond.

Creative peer-to-peer Giving Tuesday fundraising ideas

• Make it DIY: Build a peer-to-peer campaign that features your overall goal and offers donors the freedom to fundraise throughout the giving season in a way that resonates with them. DIY fundraising lets donors get creative with ideas of their own. Maybe someone would prefer to set up a fundraising page to replace holiday gifts or would like to highlight their loved one’s story on a dedicated page.
• Lean into workplace giving: Consider a peer-to-peer campaign that starts at a company level and extends out to new networks as teams compete to raise the most. Giving Tuesday can be a great way to help employees meet community impact goals and satisfy their personal goals to give back alongside coworkers. Each team member has the potential to connect your cause to new donors, making a considerable impact heading into the year-end giving season.

3. Celebrate Milestones in Memorable Ways

As you hit different campaign milestones on Giving Tuesday, get your community involved in celebrating. Take the opportunity to engage supporters online all day with the personal touches they appreciate, especially if your fundraising has been virtual this year.

Creative Milestone Celebrations for Giving Tuesday

• Share stories: For notable fundraising milestones, ask various team members to record videos telling their personal stories about what your cause means to them. You can update your campaign page with these videos alongside a real-time progress thermometer. This powerful testimonial will incentivize supporters to come back regularly throughout the day or share a preview on social media to entice new traffic to your donation page.
• Leverage partnerships: You might also consider leveraging partnerships with local businesses or celebrities. For example, a local member of your community could award a gift certificate to the largest donation at that point when you reach 25 percent of your goal, and then again at 50 and 75 percent. This can help generate excitement throughout the day and get people to donate larger amounts hoping that their gift will earn them a nice incentive.
• Create a challenge: Imagine getting a different team or board member to temporarily dye their hair a color representing your cause each time you raise $1,000. You could livestream this on social media as an incentive to continue donating all day. You can also extend this challenge to your audience through a peer-to-peer campaign and have them submit videos as they complete challenges of their own. This can be a great follow-up that you share with your entire community once Giving Tuesday is over.

4. Livestream Your Campaign

Livestreaming was highly popular before the COVID-19 pandemic and has now become an even more powerful tool for nonprofits who want to connect with their audiences worldwide. The video streaming market is projected to hit $184.3 billion by 2027, so get ahead by locking down your strategy.

The tactic has been used to broadcast live galas and endurance events. As a result of the popular demand, many livestreaming platforms have added features that allow viewers to donate directly to nonprofits while watching the live content.

Your nonprofit can incorporate a livestream component to your Giving Tuesday campaign that elevates your brand, attracts new demographics, and drives higher fundraising revenue. Anything you do to encourage viewer participation can go a long way when driving donations. It’s also a solid strategy for building genuine relationships with your viewers.

Creative Livestream Ideas for Giving Tuesday

• Broadcast your campaign: Plan to host a full-day, or partial-day, broadcast on Giving Tuesday that’s filled with live entertainment, fundraising milestone celebrations, and messages from your staff or board members. Ask donors questions that they can answer in real-time, give shoutouts to donors as they complete donations, and talk with them like you would your friends. You can use a virtual event campaign tied to a designated donation page to track your attendees’ behavior and target year-end appeals from the excitement your event introduces.
• Pre-record a Giving Tuesday Livestream: If a live broadcast is overwhelming or too time-consuming, you can still use livestream functionality on Giving Tuesday. Pre-record an entire day’s worth of content and livestream it later to make it feel like it’s happening in real-time. You can also do a mixture of pre-recorded videos with actual livestream broadcasts to help ease the workload.

Classy allows your nonprofit to embed YouTube and Twitch livestream broadcasts directly into your campaign page.

5. Unveil a Matching Gift

Giving Tuesday is a great time to unveil a matching gift period to your supporters to drive donations, especially if you’re noticing a mid-campaign lull. It’s essential that you start hunting for this matching gift partner early in your planning phases since it can take a while to solidify the agreement’s details.

Once you have it set in stone, let the public know leading up to Giving Tuesday or as a delightful day of surprise. Either way, make sure you clearly communicate the details, like how much your partner is matching and how long the matching period will last.

Be sure to spread the news far and wide across your social media channels and in your email messages to ensure maximum audience participation. Further, you can have your partner ask their staff to participate in the match to drive even more donations.

Creative Gift Match Ideas for Giving Tuesday

• Promote your match in advance: Capture the interest of donors who are on the fence about donating on Giving Tuesday by making it clear that their gifts will go further h. Share the tangible impact their donation will make on your cause. You can communicate a match early through emails, on social media through countdown stories, or in any other creative ways that make sense for your donor base.
• Create a time-bound match: Plan to release a surprise match for a specific time frame on Giving Tuesday where you’ve historically seen donations drop. In 2020, we noticed lulls before 8 am and after 9 pm across the board. Suppose you can add an early bird match in the morning or announce a new match in the evening. In that case, you may be able to revive your donor base and generate fresh excitement.

6. Leverage Giving Tuesday Year-Round

Seasoned fundraisers know that Giving Tuesday campaigns don’t end in December. Campaign follow-up is the most critical element to setting up long-term success for your organization.

Don’t forget to launch a formal follow-up campaign in the weeks following Giving Tuesday. This additional touchpoint lets you interact on a more meaningful level with each donor and preview what’s ahead for the coming year.

Creative Ideas to Retain Giving Tuesday Donors

• Promote recurring giving: The value over time of each recurring donation leads to sustainable revenue you can count on and offers a way to reach new donors through creative incentives and regular outreach. Consider tailoring your Giving Tuesday goals around recurring membership instead of one-time gifts, or pair this call to action with your social media referral approach to get existing donors to tap into their networks. Provide them with branded messaging so that each interaction within their network is impactful and motivates more recurring donors to sign up on Giving Tuesday.
• Share a preview of your largest annual events: What if you greeted each Giving Tuesday donor with an exclusive early access invitation to your annual events? Build your event registration pages in advance to capture attendees months early, and ensure you have a touchpoint to steward them with. If you can’t set up your registration before, create an interest form to grab their information and tease out details about your event in the months leading up to it.

Make it a Giving Tuesday to Remember

As you consider these creative fundraising ideas, or any others that come to mind, remember that Giving Tuesday is so much more than just one day. It’s an opportunity for your nonprofit to capitalize on the fervor of one of the social sector’s biggest fundraising opportunities of the year. Capture new audiences, delight returning donors, and steward your supporters for future efforts to come.

Be sure to visit our Giving Tuesday Resource Center below for free downloadable resources, creative campaign examples, and so much more.