Your Giving Tuesday Toolkit: 8 Free Resources to Build a Memorable Campaign

Load up your Giving Tuesday toolkit with everything you need to make an impact this year-end season—without breaking your budget.

Fall is officially here, which means the busy season for nonprofits is in full swing. 2021 marks the ninth year the world has rallied together in support of Giving Tuesday, so why not make it your most memorable campaign yet?

On Giving Tuesday 2020, the social sector raised more than $2.47 billion in the U.S. alone. Don’t let the assumed cost of building a new campaign cause you to miss this opportunity to drive your mission forward.

Below, we’ll introduce you to eight completely free, easy-to-use resources to boost your Giving Tuesday campaign. Get ready to attract loyal donors and establish solid momentum for the new year.

8 Free Additions to Your Giving Tuesday Toolkit

1. Classy’s Giving Tuesday Resource Center

Learn how to elevate your fundraising strategy for Giving Tuesday with over 50 of our top resources all in one place.

Whether you’re strategizing your first Giving Tuesday campaign or looking for fresh ideas to take your fundraising success to the next level, tap into Classy’s resources to elevate your donor experience. We’ve included a comprehensive library of free blogs, guides, checklists, templates, and webinars tailored to what your organization needs to succeed.

Organizations who engaged with Classy’s 2020 Giving Tuesday resources:

• Raised $2M on Giving Tuesday alone
• Saw 6.8 times more transactions than those who did not
• Raised 5.5 times more on average than those who did not

Dive in now to untap your full potential.

2. Free Stock Images: Pexels and Pixabay

Elevate your Giving Tuesday campaign with strong visuals to bring your narrative to life.

Pexels and Pixabay offer millions of free stock photos and videos to help your nonprofit cement an idea in the minds of your supporters and motivate donations. All content is safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist—even for commercial purposes.

People remember imagery. These extensive libraries of easily accessible content allow you to provide donors with a memorable experience, especially when pricey photo shoots are out of the question.

On Classy, nonprofits can easily access our built-in library of high-resolution Pixababy stock images on their campaign and donation pages. These come in particularly handy for impact blocks if you don’t have any quality images on hand.

3. Color Palettes: ColorHunt 

Having the right color scheme on your campaign page is critical to delivering your message and motivating action. Harmonious colors can help generate certain emotions and spark interest. Color choices also have the potential to deter donors from exploring pages further if the palette is unappealing or distracting.

ColorHunt is an open collection of color palettes that can help you find the perfect fit for your project. Easily save your favorites to find them again in the future, manage your own personal collection, or copy the color codes to use on your campaign page.

Each palette is public property and not owned by a specific creator, so you have full freedom to explore the latest collections without a second thought. You can even create and submit your own color combination if you’re feeling inspired.

4. Icons and Illustrations: Icons8

Don’t waste time relying on an advanced design team to create icons for your campaign. Icons8 is an icon pack software for Windows and Macintosh that is available in both a free and paid version.

Easily download the program and put it to use right away. Explore their expansive library of icons, photos, and illustrations to find what you need. Select your favorite graphic, customize it to the right color or size, and then drag-and-drop it into any design tool.

It’s important to note that all graphics can be used for free, but users are required to link to the Icons8 website on pages where the icon, photo, or illustration is used.

5. Graphic Designer Platform: Canva

Create beautiful designs for your Giving Tuesday campaign with Canva. Edit photos without the need for extensive photo editing knowledge or experience. This tool allows you to easily build templates that can be used year after year and create custom-sized text images for your campaign.

Miry’s List tapped into Canva’s design tools to create a unique, eye-catching “About the Campaign” section for their Afghanistan Emergency Action Fund on Classy to elevate its visual appeal.

To create a customized text image on Canva for your own campaign, follow these steps:

• Select Create a design in the main navigation
• Choose from a template or select Custom size from the drop-down menu (Miry’s List used a 600 x 150 px template for “THE NEED IS NOW”)
• Enter your preferred dimensions, then Create a new design
• Choose a font, resize your copy to fill the white space
• Download as a .png or .jpeg
• Upload the file to your campaign
• Tip: To make the background transparent, use Canva’s transparent editor, Remove.bg, or Experte.

6.

Google Slides are not just useful to create and format presentations, they also provide a solution to creating text images for your campaign hero block.

Your hero block is the first thing a supporter sees when they land on your page. Grab their attention and inspire support by elevating your design with a custom hero image.

Try it yourself:

• Create a new, blank presentation
• Type your text on any slide in a font of your choice
• Click Slide from the navigation bar, then Choose background
• Select the Color dropdown, choose Transparent at the bottom
• Click Done
• In the File dropdown, select Download
• Save as a .png
• Upload the file to your campaign

7. Web Analysis Service: Google Analytics

Understanding your campaign’s effectiveness is critical to the future success of your Giving Tuesday fundraising efforts. Since it can be challenging to find the time to assess your site, Google Analytics developed a solution.

This free web analytics tool offered by Google can help provide an inside look at your audience and how they are engaging with your campaign. Track all kinds of information about your site, including:

• How many visitors you’re getting
• How many of those visitors are new
• Where they’re coming from
• How long they’re staying on your page

Connect your Classy and Google Analytics accounts to tap into the power of our seamless integration. Track what strategies work best with your audience and use that knowledge to continue shaping your Giving Tuesday strategy for years to come.

8. Writing Assistant: Grammarly

Nothing ruins a heartfelt donation appeal more than a spelling mistake. Use Grammarly to ensure all of the copy in your emails and on your campaign page is free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors before pushing them out to your donor base.

This AI-powered application helps you communicate more effectively by not only correcting grammatical mistakes, but also by making your writing more understandable. Grammarly checks the tone of your message and provides synonym suggestions to make the text more readable and precise.

Achieve Your Giving Tuesday Goals on Classy

Classy’s supporter-centric fundraising platform is designed to improve the giving experience for everyone involved.

On Giving Tuesday 2020, we processed nearly $38 million of donations from more than 260,000 different donors with the support of our best-in-class technology. Our tools enable nonprofits to connect supporters with the causes they care about, accelerate their impact, and future-proof their fundraising.

Take advantage of Classy on Giving Tuesday to: 

• Create customizable, modern, mobile-optimized campaigns to showcase your brand and elevate your nonprofit’s story
• Give donors options to make a larger impact with a recurring donation at any of the eight frequencies we currently offer—one-time, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and yearly
• Make it incredibly easy for supporters to give through intuitive payment options such as digital wallets, mobile payments, and bank transfers
• Tap into low-cost transaction fees, automatic credit card updating, industry-leading fraud protection, and more with Classy Pay, our seamless integration with Stripe
• Form seamless connections across your most essential tools with our integrations, like Salesforce, Boundless Fundraising, and Facebook

Request a demo today to learn more.

Make It a Year to Remember

Capitalize on the fervor of Giving Tuesday by setting your strategy and taking advantage of these eight free, easy-to-use resources.

Whether your organization is on a tight budget or just looking for new ways to get creative, these tools are a great way to up-level your campaign page to attract new supporters, retain existing donors, and motivate your larger community to stay involved through year-end and beyond.