How to implement a Giving Day

How to run a Giving Day campaign

Why have a Giving Day?

While fundraising is traditionally a process that you engage in year round, focusing giving around a 24-hour digitally driven campaign rallies an institution’s whole community behind a particular cause.

Additionally, it builds a level of excitement, interest and energy that both draws new donors and rekindles relationships with existing ones.

Our team has had a great experience working with the Advance from Gravyty team in the last couple of years. The platform has really helped us expand our Giving Day, our Giving Tuesday, and also Crowdfunding efforts. We look forward to continuing to build on that great success.

Francisco Peguero, Associate Director, Digital Programs, Boston University

Three pillars of your digital fundraising campaign

Pillar 1—Vision

  • Define your goals (monetary, participation, volunteers, etc.)
  • Involve other units and departments across your institution
  • Craft the brand and story of your campaign
  • Pick a date!

Pillar 2—Strategy

  • Identify what fields to include
  • Incorporate gamification, challenges, matching gifts, and incentives
  • Build out your messaging content and timeline for events
  • Create your omni-channel marketing strategy and determine what channels are needed (direct mail, email, social media, texting, digital, etc.)
  • Identify your segmentation strategy and ask ladders
  • Leverage ambassadors

Pillar 3—Platform

  • Craft you website look and feel, structure, images and text
  • Use tools such as Advance’s Admin Dashboard, Site Editor and Campaign Creator
  • Set up email automation
  • Test and use payment processors to make giving easy

Giving Day success

Gamification

  • Collaboration between groups, units, departments and campaigns
  • Giveaways or rewards for gifts that hit certain goal thresholds
  • Engaging goals for acquisition or retention

Involvement

  • The most successful approach is realizing that Giving Week is a celebration of the community
  • Organized and intentional team effort
  • Teamwork, cohesion, and commitment across all departments
  • Peer-to-peer sharing

Storytelling

  • Compelling, specific narrative
  • Simplified yet clearly defined message and strategy
  • Website/platform that converts the story the school is telling
  • Unifying message that resonates with your whole institution
  • Theme filtering into a multi-channel approach

Kicking off your campaign

Who are your stakeholders?

It’s important to ask these questions before kicking off your Giving Day campaign:

  • Are you reaching our to your entire community?
  • Is this a dedicated alumni campaign?
  • Is your parents association driving these efforts?
  • Are you trying to build a culture of philanthropy among your students?

Want to see the rest of the Giving Day planning guide? Download the full guide.

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