Whether you met your goals or not, Giving Tuesday can help set up your organization for ongoing success throughout the year. Here are three ways to keep Giving Tuesday going long after the big day!
Welcome new donors
Giving Tuesday is a great time to attract new donors for your organization. New donors may come to you through a peer-to-peer campaign or simply by someone who is passionate about your cause and happens to find your organization through an online search or social media promotion.
No matter how they came to donate to you, it is important that you welcome your new donor to your organization. Letters are very effective ways to welcome new donors. The letters should thank donors for their support, tell your story, talk about your work (statistics are always helpful to show your impact!), and outline upcoming activities and events.
Depending on your organization’s bandwidth you may choose to do a higher touch welcome like a phone call and/or a personal note from the Executive Director. More personalized approaches should always be used for donors who give to your organization at a high level. It is important to decide the amount based on your organization’s budget and average gift.
Ask new donors to give, again...soon!
For many fundraisers it may seem counter intuitive to ask new donors for added support so soon after they just gave. Organizations often wonder, if it is too soon to ask and they do not want to “bug” new donors. The reality is that you have to use the momentum from their first gift to lock donors into your organization for a long-term commitment. According to Go Beyond Survival: Innovate & Evolve to Thrive in your Nonprofit, “donors who give twice in a 90-day window have a 60% retention rate”, so it is important to ask new donors to give again soon. The window for your second ask can be even shorter for Giving Tuesday donors.
Since Giving Tuesday, is near the end of the year, making an ask in December may help lock in your new donors. December is the best month for giving for nonprofits with 31% of annual giving occurring during this month, according to Charity Navigator. Another big time for giving occurs December 29-31 when 12% of annual giving occurs, per Charity Navigator. You can get very creative and do a big drive to get new donors to give again by focusing on the last 3 days of the year.
As you create your second ask, remember to remind donors why they got involved with your organization and the impact of your work. It is also key to describe the future of your organization focusing on plans for the upcoming year.
Work to convert one-time donors into recurring monthly donors
Look at the number of donors who gave a one-time gift during your Giving Tuesday campaign and work to convert them into monthly donors. Recurring monthly donations can help your organization become financially sustainable. Monthly donors ensure that your organization has consistent revenue and the lean times become a lot less stressful because you have dollars that you can count on month to month. According to The Nonprofit Recurring Giving Benchmark, annual donors are 60% more likely to give to you again while monthly recurring donors are 90% more likely to give to you.
