#GivingTuesday has come and gone – but what’s next?!

By now, you know the premise of Giving Tuesday: to encourage people to do good and counter the mass spending and shopping that comes from Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Giving Tuesday was born at the 92nd Street Y and its Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact in New York City in 2012. It is now an independent nonprofit and global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people, companies, and foundations to give!

Last year in the United States, $3.1 billion was donated to US nonprofits by a reported 37 million people, a 15% increase compared to 2021. And this wasn’t unique. Every year, there is an increase in donations directly related to Giving Tuesday.

Has your organization gotten in on the action? We want to ensure that you take advantage of the opportunity to maximize your Giving Tuesday campaigns, but also give you the strategies and tactics you need to multiply your efforts, so you continue to see the effects for months to come!

On this year’s Giving Tuesday, hopefully, your organization received donations from many of your existing donors and was also able to attract net new donors who gave for the first time. What do you do now? How do you ensure you multiply your efforts and turn these one-time Giving Tuesday donors into life-long supporters?

Let’s dive into some steps to get the most out of your Giving Tuesday efforts post-campaign!

Five Steps to Maximize Your Giving Tuesday Efforts

1. Thank Your Donors

37% of donors are annoyed if an organization doesn’t thank them, and who can blame them?

From our early years, we’ve been taught the importance of saying “please” and “thank you.” Now is the time to remember this courtesy. When it comes to donor relations, expressing gratitude should be the first step. By thanking your donors, you make them feel valued and lay the foundation for a long-lasting and fruitful relationship. Thanking your donors can be simple. A personalized thank you letter can go a long way in fostering positive donor engagement. By outlining the impact of their donation and demonstrating how their support has made a difference, you make your donors feel appreciated and connected to your cause.

However, don’t wait too long to send your notes of appreciation. Donors want timely acknowledgements as it shows that their contribution is important to and appreciated by your organization.

We know what you’re thinking now. It’s post-holiday season, and I don’t have time to write all of these personalized thank-you notes. Don’t worry! We know this can be extremely overwhelming, but we may just have a solution that could help. engage is an AI-powered content generation tool that can create content 16x faster. And one of its key features is writing unique, personalized thank-you notes in your organization’s brand and tone.

Thanking your donors isn’t just a polite gesture; it’s a vital step towards creating and maintaining positive relationships and trust with your supporters.

2. Get to Know Your Donors

Donor segmentation involves categorizing donors into groups based on similarities, such as demographics, interests, communications preferences, etc. Donor segmentation gives your organization the power to create unique, appropriate stewardship strategies, tailor communications and campaigns to specific groups, and provide donors a more personalized and relevant experience.

For example, you could segment your donors based on:

• Engagement level
• Size of gift
• Donation frequency
• Interests
• Communication preferences

As mentioned above, segmenting your donors allows you to create a personalized stewardship strategy. Let’s look at an example. Imagine you just received a large influx of donations on Giving Tuesday. Now, you need to know who these donors are, the most appropriate way to engage them, and what giving level would be most suitable to keep them giving into the future. Using a Fundraising Intelligence platform like Kindsight, you can quickly gather Live Profiles on your new donors and uncover the most appropriate fundraising program for each. This segments them into major donors, hidden gems, monthly givers, planned givers, etc.

Now, using engage, you can create a personalized stewardship plan for each segment or group. This may include generating authentic, empathy-driven email appeals in seconds that are tailored to your specific appeals, personalized thank you letters, and even direct mail campaigns tailored to that particular segment.

A personalized stewardship strategy, rather than a one-size-fits-all Giving Tuesday strategy, helps you engage donors more effectively, boost your productivity, and increase your likelihood of future donations.

3. Nurture your new Donors

Nurturing your new donors post-Giving Tuesday is vital to maintaining their support and ensuring long-term support for your nonprofit. A few simple yet effective strategies can help foster strong relationships with your donors.

Maintain open communication: Regularly update your donors on the progress of the projects and programs their contributions have supported. This will keep them engaged and informed about the impact of their donations while allowing you to ask for additional support when it makes sense.

Engage with personal touches: As mentioned earlier, thank yous and personalized notes show your donors you value them.

Tell impact stories: Share compelling stories of how your nonprofit has utilized the donor’s gift to further your mission. Detail how their contributions were used and the impact they had.

Provide new opportunities for involvement: Invite your donors to volunteer, participate in events, or join a committee. By offering different ways to engage with your organization, you create a strong sense of community surrounding your organization and encourage ongoing support.

The key to sustaining the support of new donors post Giving Tuesday lies in cultivating strong and lasting relationships. Strategies like maintaining open communications, personal touches, impact stores, and providing new opportunities for involvement with your nonprofit forms the foundation for this ongoing connection.

4. Create Next Year’s Campaign Faster

engage gives you the power to create high-converting multi-channel campaigns that enable limitless scalability with just a few easy steps—all from one place.

This will help you:

• Instantly create engaging, on-brand, authentic content
• Extend your reach and boost engagement
• Raise more support for your mission
• Create high-converting multi-channel campaigns

How does it work?

1. Generate a brief for your End of Year campaign including selecting a target audience and style for the campaign.
2. Select the quantity and types of content you want to generate including direct mail, emails, text messages, social media posts, phone scripts and more.
3. Effortlessly generate all content simultaneously for all channels with consistent messaging
4. Deploy the campaign across your selected channels. Copy your content into your provider or use direct integrations to deploy directly within engage.
5. Using built-in reporting and analytics, gain insights into which donors have contributed and how they’ve engaged.

engage empowers you to effortlessly create impactful campaigns that can scale limitlessly. By streamlining your process – you can extend your reach, boost engagement, and raise more support for your mission.

As we conclude the fervor of #GivingTuesday, a day fueled by collective generosity for positive change, it’s crucial to shift focus towards sustaining the impact.

Expressing gratitude is foundational for building enduring relationships. Timely thank-you’s, aided by  iwave and engage for personalized messages, set the stage for a lasting connection. Your journey shouldn’t end with gratitude; it should extend to understanding your donors on a deeper level. Segmenting your donors empowers you to tailor stewardship strategies and communications. This personalized journey creates a more engaging and relevant experience for your donors, strengthening their connection to your cause and turning them into lifelong supporters!

The end of the year and Giving Tuesday are extremely busy pushes for fundraisers, when you can, please take time to rest and reset. The world needs you!

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The Kindsight Team