Ep. 172: What the Top 1% of Nonprofits Do Differently on GivingTuesday
EPISODE 172
What the Top 1% of Nonprofits Do Differently on GivingTuesday
About the Episode:
Every year, billions are donated on GivingTuesday, but only a small percentage of nonprofits turn that day into real momentum.
In this episode, I share exactly what the top 1% of nonprofits do differently to make GivingTuesday their biggest fundraising win of the year (without burnout, perfectionism, or chaos). You’ll learn the seven steps to lead with clarity, confidence, and courage, from creating a curated donation page to leading on email, activating your team, and treating the day like a 24-hour relay, not a morning sprint. Whether you’re a small shop or scaling organization, this episode is your roadmap to modern, high-converting campaigns that work, even when you’re short on time. Because GivingTuesday isn’t about doing it all, it’s about doing the right things, decisively.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The seven skills that set the top 1% of nonprofits apart on GivingTuesday
Why perfectionism kills momentum, and how to lead with confidence instead
The difference between generic donation forms and curated GivingTuesday pages
How to prime donors without overwhelming them
Myths that keep small orgs from participating, and how to bust them
How to activate your board, volunteers, and community so you’re not fundraising alone
Why email outperforms social, and how to write messages that convert
The “It ain’t over till it’s over” mindset: treating GivingTuesday like a 24-hour relay
How to hit your goal even if your morning looks slow
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“$3.1 billion was donated on GivingTuesday last year.”
“GivingTuesday rewards action, not consensus.”
“Perfection is the enemy of progress.”
“Ditch the general giving form and build a curated page.”
“Build a short, easy-to-read, easily scrollable campaign-specific page with a single clear goal.”
“Step into noise confidently.”
“Fundraising isn't a solo sport. Don't fundraise alone.”
“Turn GivingTuesday into a team event.”
“Make noise without burning out - focus on email.”
“Email is where the donations happen. Social media is where the visibility happens.”
“A heartfelt message with a clear link to your giving page will outperform 10 social media posts every single time.”
“Treat GivingTuesday like a 24-hour relay, not a morning sprint.”
“GivingTuesday isn't about doing it all. It's about doing the right things.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Double Your Donations - Raise More From Your Laptop Without Chasing Grants or Galas
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
Donations on Demand: Build a $5K Email Campaign System in 30 min/week
The SPRINT Method™ - Fundraise Like a Pro, 5 Figures At a Time
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 0:24Welcome back to the podcast. It's our GivingTuesday episode. Now, whether or not you have your GivingTuesday plan, like, locked and loaded and ready to go, or you're like, oh, I need to do that, or maybe you're like, Oh, I hate giving Tuesday. This episode is for you, because we're going to be digging into what the top 1% of nonprofits do differently on GivingTuesday. And if you're like a few of my clients, and maybe your state does a specific Giving Day, you'll be able to adapt everything that I'm sharing today to work for your state's Giving Day. So Giving Tuesday is coming very fast. It is rapidly approaching is on Tuesday, December 2 this year. And if you're feeling behind or tired or uncertain or just like it's a noisy Day of Giving online, you're not alone. The truth is, you don't actually need a perfect plan to have a successful day. so we're going to dig into and today you'll hear the seven essential skills you need for GivingTuesday.
Christina Edwards 1:45
you need focus, you need leadership. You need to spend your time on what actually helps move the needle. So today's episode will dig into the seven proven ways to make GivingTuesday count without burning out, without overthinking it, or falling into the well, you know what? Let's just skip it this year. Let's just do like a social post in an email and call it a day to keep my board happy. We're not doing that. So these are the things that I see our clients and other top nonprofits do to turn a 24 hour campaign into long term momentum. So I want to anchor you in this is for somebody who feels like it's hard, I'm not sure. Oh, should we even do this? Let's anchor you in really quickly. One $3.1 billion was donated in GivingTuesday last year. That is up 13% year over year. Now let's drill into that for just one moment. Think about the economic challenges we have been in, especially in the States, in the past, economic uncertainty, right? In the past several years, literally from covid on, it's been, it's been a winding, wild time, even with presidential political economic challenges, inflation, tariffs, etc, right? What we see year after year after year. Specifically for GivingTuesday is an increase in donations. We also see an increase in donors. More is more. More is happening every single year. So I don't want you to miss out on this one big day of global giving. Yes, it's noisy, yes, it is crowded. Yes, inboxes are full, yes, social media, yes. Texting, I get it. It's a lot. At the time I'm recording this, we just had elections here in in Georgia, and like, I got more texts than I've ever gotten for this particular election cycle. Like, more of the like, vote for me. Don't vote for that person. Text, right? I get it. They're texting more than ever. Inboxes are crowded, and it works. That isn't a reason not to participate. So people are giving, and that means it's an opportunity for you. So let's talk about how you can capture it all right.
Step number one, remember that Perfection is the enemy of progress. So if you're waiting for everyone to sign off on a graphic you're already behind. GivingTuesday rewards action, not consensus. This is a big one. So pick your message, pick your theme, move fast, trust your gut. Good and done. Beats perfect and pending every single time. So if you're editing your appeal, pulling your team about a subject line or a content piece, you're not planning. You're just stalling. That's it. This is where teams lose momentum, gets caught in the spin cycle, and what was going to be a high impact campaign is a trickle, right? Because you're trying to make every element perfect instead of just leading the campaign forward. So here's what that commonly looks like. This looks like rewriting the fundraising email five times because you're afraid it sounds too direct, holding off on scheduling posts because one staff member hasn't approved the image or the caption, spending a week wordsmithing a campaign name when you could already just be inviting donors to give and have that donation page up and ready to go. Here's what the top 1% Sent you instead, they pick a clear message and publish. They trust imperfect action is more powerful than polished hesitation. They know donors reward confidence and momentum, not committees and drafts. It's true. So you can't co create that urgency. Somebody has to lead. Somebody has to lead.
Christina Edwards 5:50
And that's what sets that top 1% apart. They make clear decisions, even if, even if you're listening to this episode and you haven't planned anything, it's not too late. You have plenty of time to come up with a theme, come up with a goal, build out that page and that story, and go. They make clear decisions. They communicate quickly. They move their teams forward, even when everything isn't lined up neatly. So once you're leading decisively, your next move is making sure when donors click to give, they land on a page that actually converts, not a generic donation form. I'm going to be spending a lot more time talking about this, because I have been recently enlightened even more that no matter how small or large your nonprofit is, this is such a misstep, such a gap that's happening. What I mean is I see this with beginner nonprofits, but I see this with advanced multi million dollar nonprofits that you are missing you're making a huge mistake in your fundraising campaigns.
So let's move into step two, ditch the general giving form and build a curated page. What do I mean here? A curated GivingTuesday page converts at least two to three times more than a generic donation form. A generic donation form probably already lives on your website. When you click the donate button, it's just a form that says, like, first name, last name, address, how much you want to give. Sometimes it's long form and clunky. There might not be really anything. It doesn't talk about a specific reason why to give a specific a specific time or anything. So a curated form feels like a campaign. A general form, just a anonymous, kind of ominous form feels like a transaction. So what I commonly see for GivingTuesday is linking to your year round form to donate because it's already there. You already built it. You don't want to mess with it, right? Forgetting to update the photo, goal, copy from last year. Sometimes we kind of see that where you're just hitting repeat duplicate on last year's campaign, or dropping a link in social captions without explaining why today matters.
So here's what the top 1% do instead. They build a short, easy to read, easily scrollable campaign specific page with a single clear goal. You with me, a single clear goal. Now bonus points for having a progress bar, a photo, a quote, something that draws that reader in a crisp call to action. You should treat the page like a invitation, not a checkout form. It should not feel like a checkout form. So if your donation page could belong to any nonprofit, really like it would just look like I'm donating to anyone, anywhere.
Christina Edwards 8:50
That's a sign that your donation page is to it or form is too generic, so you need to create a specific, curated page for GivingTuesday. If you don't know how to do that, if you don't have the proper donation tool to do that, you need to reach out to me, and I can point you to a couple of our favorite resources. You can go, always go to splendid atl.com, forward slash tools for some of my most favorite donation tools.
Christina Edwards 9:25
So we're taking decisive action. We've created a curated high impact giving page, step three prime. Before you ask, this is a big one. Y'all do not appear out of nowhere on December 2, going donate here. Okay, you need to at least start leaving breadcrumbs, priming your audience that this is coming. This could be a coming soon. Post a teaser. Email something to let donors in and know this is coming. Don't assume because we. Know that it's our Super Bowl time, that they know it's our that they know it's coming, that they have it marked on their calendar. You also want to think about the donor experience. Donors are consumers. Consumers are donors. Okay, if that's true, which it is, they've had Thanksgiving, they're in the States. Then they had Black Friday, then they had Small Business Saturday, emails, emails, emails, social posts, social posts, social posts everywhere, then they have, what is it? Cyber Monday, Cyber Monday, and then GivingTuesday. So I want you to think about your average donor or prospects experience. We need to let them know this day of global giving is coming. Okay? So here's what that commonly looks like when you know you're not priming ahead of time. You're sending one lonely email on the morning of GivingTuesday. You're posting a graphic that says it's GivingTuesday with no context. People are like, okay, cool, right? You're hoping the algorithm will remind donors, instead of you. That is your job. That is your job. Okay? What the top 1% do instead? They warm up supporters a week in advance with a short story goal or countdown. They send a 24 hour reminder and follow up thank you that same day, right? They're reusing and improving, improving and optimizing assets from last year, right? Nothing goes to waste. You don't have to start from scratch for your GivingTuesday campaign. They're building anticipation, even if you have a week. One of the mistakes that I saw last year, and I've kind of seen this as a trend, as GivingTuesday becomes more and more and more widely adopted by nonprofits, is some of y'all started to notice that you needed to prime your audience. Okay, so you're priming your audience ahead of time, you know, so that they're not hearing about your GivingTuesday campaign, just on GivingTuesday but some of y'all are priming way too early, way too early. Okay, so I don't need to hear about your GivingTuesday campaign weeks and weeks ahead of time. Okay? Okay, because remember, we just went back to the consumer journey. They're like out there shopping for Black Friday sales. We're doing Thanksgiving. We're figuring out time off. We've got family coming down. We don't need an email three weeks in advance, or even two weeks in advance, talking about something that is a a online fundraiser that's happening way down there. My thought about that is, I'll just read it later, right? So I like a shorter window for that, so don't feel like I think there was a little bit of a competitiveness last year that I noticed where people are like so and so started promoting GivingTuesday, but it's 14 days out, so I better send an email, right? You don't have to worry about that. You don't. There's enough for everyone.
Christina Edwards 12:52
All right. Step number four, bust the myths holding you back. So myth one, only the big nonprofits, only one, the ones that have the big brand names and the huge marketing teams do well, false, not true. Smaller orgs can easily outperform the bigger ones because they're personalized, community driven and nimble.
Myth number two, our cause doesn't work on GivingTuesday, right? People don't like to donate to us. On GivingTuesday, right? You're the you're the outlier. No, false, every cause works when you follow the steps I'm outlining for you. So your cause may not have worked because you didn't prime your audience last year, your cause may not have worked because there wasn't really a strong story or strong reason for people to give right now, you may not have had any urgency baked in. Your cause may not have resulted in a successful GivingTuesday last year because it took people to a general form that did no help, no heavy lifting for conversions. Okay,
Christina Edwards 13:55
so here's what the top 1% do instead, step into noise confidently. Don't get mad that it's a noise each time, right? I don't see Sephora or Home Depot or the GAP being like, we're mad that everybody else is doing Black Friday. We're not doing it this year. Can you imagine if the gap was like, we're not doing Black Friday. Too many people are doing Black Friday this year. They would never they're like, Okay, every single retailer, brick and mortar and e commerce Store, is doing Black Friday. So what is our edge? What is our edge? What do we need to do to stand out? So don't get mad that other people are doing it. Ask yourself, What can we do to stand out. so the top 1% are stepping into that noise more confidently, speaking directly to their core audience, using the day as proof of community energy, not competition, focusing on that connection over the volume, right? So really, watch out that urge. Watch out for that like kind of Debbie Downer voice to be like, there's no what's the point? I'm. Know other people or have more audience? No, no, no, no. You focus on your people. You focus on your community and the impact that more funding will have. All right.
Step number five, one of my favorites. This is the entire reason why I built my program The SPRINT Method™, which serves nonprofit founders and solo shops who are emerging organizations. Step five, fundraising isn't a solo sport. Don't fundraise alone. Don't fundraise alone. This is the day for you to activate your team of board members, ambassadors, volunteers, staffers, even superfans, right? This could be your social street team. This could be your board. This could be peer to peer. Works really beautifully on GivingTuesday, it should not be a solo sport. I want you to think about this. This is not, this is not a solo sport. This is a team sport. Get your team together. So what this can look like is, you know, commonly, your ED or comms person, instead running every post, every email, every reply, it's just them, white knuckled, right? Nail biting. Boards watching. This is a big one. Boards watching from the sidelines, weighing in their two cents. Instead of amplifying the mission and getting to work, your board could be doing a text, a THON. Your board could be doing phone a thons. We walk our clients in the purpose and profit club. We have an entire script for this process. This is a great day for the boards to get on board and into action. So here's what the top 1% do instead. They turn GivingTuesday into a team event. You can even gamify it, right? We have a client in the sprint method who is doing this, and it's so cool to see this campaign that they came up with where they're really gamifying it, where every time you make a donation, a piece will be revealed from this, this sort of like hidden image, and it works so well with our mission. I can't wait to see it. And it's like, yeah, I want to see the reveal. I want to see what happens. You can gamify it. You can even gamify it internally with your staff and your board. Hands On supporters, ready made posts, talking points that are shared easily. If you want people to help you. If you don't want fundraising to be a solo sport, help them give them what they need to succeed. Okay, using group text, Slack, WhatsApp, Group Me, some place, some collective digital hub so that you can celebrate gifts, so you can build up your team. You can coach whoever is helping you, your peers right in real time. Fundraising works when people feel part of something. So ask yourself, How can I help them feel part of something, while also creating a communication channel that is easier for me. So a whatsapp thread works really beautifully for that.
Christina Edwards 17:54
All right, step number six, this might be my favorite one, because you know me make noise without burning out. Focus on email. I am all about becoming an email first fundraiser. It's why I built my course Easy Emails For Impact™. So here's what I mean when everyone says GivingTuesday is too noisy. Oh, it's just like, it's just a day where it's just so crowded, it's just so hard. Yeah, they're right on social media it is, and it may feel crowded in your email inbox too, but that actually is your secret advantage. I want you to think about, if you're listening to me on the podcast and you can't see the visuals of my hand, I have like, two hands up right now, and I want you to, like, hold in one hand, social media and hold in the other hand, Email. Email is where the donations happen. Social media is where the visibility happens. Okay, so social media is great and beautiful for visibility and awareness and kind of that, that traction, that big kind of momentum and ripple effect, right, showing and supporting your community, getting them involved. Email is where the money happens. It's okay that you feel like your email inbox is busy on GivingTuesday. That is not a reason not to use it. That's a reason to double down on it. So here's what it looks like before, spending hours on social graphics that reach 2% of your followers, because you know that algorithm, at best, 10% of your followers were seeing it fast. Math, if you have 2000 followers, that's 200 people, right? That's not very good. That's not good. At worst, we're talking about like a handful of people. That's why email wins every single day. I'm not saying don't use social I'm saying use them together. So it also looks like feeling invisible, because social posts get buried other over all these other campaigns. We know what that looks like. Okay, so here's what the top 1% are doing instead, they're leading on email, the highest converting channel for online giving. you can write one great message with a clear story and link to that curated page. Remember, we want to hit those certain points all the way through. You can repurpose that email into social captions. Thank you notes, if you have time for one thing. Send emails. You need to send multiple emails. Your emails should be priming in advance. Your emails should be multiple on that day. But here's the thing, I want you to think about you.
Christina Edwards 20:18
A heartfelt message with a clear link to your giving page will outperform 10 social media posts every single time. I watch this with clients, again and again and again, they'll send the same message with the same photo on social media and on Facebook and Instagram, and then they'll send out that same message on email and the flooding of donations from email, you can track that. You can AB test that. So here's the challenge on GivingTuesday inboxes are full. You're like Christina, there's so many GivingTuesday emails. So what do you need to do? You need to increase your frequency. And here's the bigger thing, you need to make sure those subject lines and that preview text is irresistible, because if you spend all of this time building out a great story with a great campaign page, and you've got your donor match, and you've got your really great photos and videos and all the things, and no one's opening your emails. You did it for nothing, right? So your preview texts and your subjects are more important than ever. Please don't do the it's GivingTuesday as your subject lines. It's why we built Easy Emails For Impact™. We cover all of that. We cover what to send, how often to send it. We give you email subject lines. We give you everything in that course, I'm opening up enrollment with 50% off. If you want to grab our templates, you can go through the course now. You can go through it instantly, or you can take the course at your own pace over the next year. But Go grab the templates so you can create, use our GivingTuesday templates in advance, and just schedule those out. Just customize them slightly for your organization, and make sure that you get high converting, high deliverability, emails that get read, that get clicked, that get read, that get funded.
So in Easy Emails For Impact™, we teach you how to write those high converting GivingTuesday emails, the same ones our clients use to raise 5k 10k even 20k in a day, you need to increase not only the frequency of your emails, but the quality of your emails. And the quality starts with the story, and once you have that, it goes back to your subject line and your preview text. So let's move into the final and I'm going to say most important step. This is going to be a step that is as important for GivingTuesday as it is for any fundraiser that you run. Step seven, it ain't over till it's over. The day isn't over till it's over. Most GivingTuesday donations happen easily after 5pm so when your morning looks slow or you don't get that dopamine jolt of the influx of donations coming in. Listen, I want that for you too, and it sucks. We don't get it right away. But if you don't, don't panic, that can be very, very normal. So this could look like seeing kind of a quiet morning and a little bit more of a trick. More of a trickle, then deciding that your campaign flopped. And then what do you do? You pull back. You literally, energetically pull back. You start to rethink, maybe we shouldn't send that email. You know, I was going to call that donor. I'm not going to bother. I was going to do the text they they already saw it. You talk yourself out of taking imperfect, impactful action, then you kind of go silent instead of following up. That trickles down to your team, your staff, your street team, your board, right? That is infectious. That is the bad kind of contagious. So here's what I want you to do instead with the 1% do treat GivingTuesday like a 24 hour relay, not a morning sprint. It is one big, energetic day. You cannot take action based on what you're seeing and deciding, forget it. Never mind if people would have donated by not, no, it ain't over till it's over. So that means, of course, sending multiple emails, sending multiple outreaches, doing one to one outreach. It's a great day for a phone, a THON, right? And you can do that after 5pm you can do that even if it has felt a little bit like a trickle in the first half of the day. Remember to send those final match reminders, posting real time videos, keeping that energy high. So at 3pm you have two options. If that happens right, you can kind of go quiet, you can give up, or you could hit the gas. And my clients that hit the gas, those are the ones that hit or exceed their goal every single time. So you, I want you to think about, am I being reactionary to what's happening right now? Gosh, I thought we would get that one donor. I thought they would donate by now, and they didn't. So you know, you're you're spinning. Or am I deciding, no matter what, I'm hitting the gas, and this is our day, so that's what I want for you. I want you to hit the gas, and I want you to stay with it, and I want you to decide it ain't over till it's over. I have personally done this with my own campaigns, with my own launches, and with my clients, and it is true you've got to give you. Donor base and their their friends and family, right? Your sort of overall network, their prospects, your prospects, you've got to give them grace. GivingTuesday is a Tuesday that is a work day for most of us. So I don't care if your first donation doesn't come in until six o'clock at night, you can absolutely still hit your goal. Do not decide it's you know what happened if it was going to happen. Don't do that. Don't Don't undersell yourself. So let's recap. You don't need a viral hashtag, you don't need a team of designers. You need a clear message, a curated donation page and a confident leader, aka, you steering the ship. Somebody has to be the believer here. GivingTuesday isn't about doing it all. It's about doing the right things. You can do this whether or not you've started your plan or whether or not your plan is mostly done. I want you to if you your plan is mostly complete. I want you to go through these seven steps. I go, ooh, where do I need to optimize? Where do I need to layer on a couple of strategies we went through today. And if you're ready for your emails to do the heavy lifting, and maybe, like me, you're like, I don't want to sit and write a bunch of emails right now, and you just want to grab our templates and our system inside of Easy Emails For Impact™. It's open now. You can go to splendid courses.com, forward slash email, and you can get the entire system at 50% off. You can go in, grab our templates, customize them, schedule them out. You'll be done in less than an hour. Okay, so that will take the guesswork out of what to send.
Christina Edwards 26:43
because if you're tired of shouting into the social void, your inbox is where the real generosity happens. Lead bravely. Don't do it alone. Move fast and remember good and done beats perfect and pending every single time. I'll see you next week.