Name: Panic to Profit: Your 11th-Hour Playbook for GivingTuesday and Year-End Success
Uploaded: 2025-11-05T19:31:26.805Z
Duration: 59 min 52 s
Description: Panic to Profit: Your 11th-Hour Playbook for GivingTuesday and Year-End Success

Transcript for "Panic to Profit: Your 11th-Hour Playbook for GivingTuesday and Year-End Success": Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for our end of year fundraising session today, Panic to Profit, your eleventh hour playbook for Giving Tuesday and year end success. Before we kick it off, I just wanna introduce my colleague, Sophie Wilson. She's our Blackbaud representative who's on the line. If you have any questions about how Blackbaud can help you transform your year end fundraising results and revolutionize your mission's impact. So she'll put, a link to her information in the chat as well, but feel free. You can direct message her. She'll be on the line to help. So you'll receive a recording, for this webinar. And, you know, without further ado, I'm gonna go ahead and pass it over to our incredible fundraising experts today, Jessica Thrift and Amy Baffra. Thank you so much for introducing us, and thanks everybody who's joining us today. I'm really excited that as busy as this time of year is that you spent some time with us, so we appreciate it. I'm Jessica Thrift. I'm a strategic consultant here at Blackbaud. Amy is gonna introduce herself in just a second. I've been at Blackbaud for almost four years. Now that feels crazy to say, but it's gone by very quickly. And, I work with a few different products on the Blackbaud side. So if anyone that I work with is in the chat, say hello, please. It's nice to see you. And, prior to joining Blackbaud, I worked in higher ed advancement for a long time. But I got my start in fundraising as a phonathon caller when I was in college. So I've been doing this for a while. Amy, do you wanna introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Amy Bobra. I'm also a strategic consultant with Blackbaud. I've been here just about a year, a year and a half at this point, and I'm working again with a couple different products, helping with some of the operations side and prospect research. So, again, say hi if I've worked with you. Prior to joining Blackbaud, I spent about ten years in fundraising. I was mostly at smaller organizations, and I spent every one of those ten years was very involved in a Giving Tuesday campaign. So this is near and dear to my heart. So we are excited to get started. Excellent. Alright. So we are you know, our title is Panic to Profit, Eleventh Hour Playbook for GivingTuesday and Year End Success. So I wanna start by talking about kind of why Giving Tuesday is such a big deal to so many of our organizations. This is not just another day. It's actually a global movement that seems to unleash generosity in people that, you know, we we have trouble kinda harnessing that energy at other times of the year. So it's really activating for a lot of our community. Across the Blackbaud world, we do a lot of research and analysis on kind of how Giving Tuesday efforts are performing. And so, we have a lot of information about that that we are always kind of nerding out about. And, like, for example, in 2024, we found that Americans gave $3,600,000,000 on Giving Tuesday a load. That is a lot of zeros. That is a lot of sleepless nights from a lot of frazzled fundraisers. I just wanna acknowledge that. And then, additionally, we're seeing that 34% of charitable giving is actually happening in q four now. So if you feel like you're aging a decade in November, you're not alone. Like, we're all in the same boat. So I just wanna emphasize, like, this is a big, big opportunity for a lot of our organizations, and that's why we feel so much expectation and excitement around it. It is an opportunity to really engage new donors, to support our year end campaign efforts, and also to do some really great storytelling around our organization's work and our mission. So, you know, because it's such a good opportunity, we have such a big audience, we're seeing that there is a really staggering kinda trend in how Giving Tuesday is performing globally. You know, according to our research, since 2012, Giving Tuesday has actually raised $18,500,000,000 globally, which is staggering for me to think about sometimes. So, this year, Giving Tuesday is happening on December 2, which is exactly four weeks from yesterday. So we have built out a plan that is built around those four weeks to give you concrete things that you can do, to have a plan and a strategy, so that you can actually deliver a Giving Tuesday campaign four weeks from yesterday. When you leave this webinar, whether you're working with limited resources or a big budget, you're gonna have a plan for actionable strategies that you can employ. So, we'll be talking about plan and prepare. We'll be talking about building awareness, engaging your community, and then executing that plan. So remember, strategy beats stress. Do not panic. Just plan. So given that, let's go ahead and dive into those four week strategies. Here are here are the kind of weeks that we're gonna walk through. And Amy's gonna kick us off with four weeks to go, plan and prepare. Alright. Week four. So we're kicking off today. I guess four weeks was yesterday, but we're gonna lay the groundwork for your Giving Tuesday campaign. This week is all about the foundation, setting clear goals, telling a compelling story, and making sure that your systems are all ready to support success. So first, let's start with SMART goals. You may have seen this before, but SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timed. So in other words, our goals need to be concrete, they need to be realistic, and they need to be time bound. So, yes, that means that your goals need to be more than raise a bazillion dollars, and they need to be even more than raise 10% more than we did last year. I also wanna encourage you to think beyond just dollars raised, and include goals around donors, volunteers, and social reach. So for example, maybe your goals include doubling your ambassador base, bringing in 50 new donors, or even increasing board engagement on social media. My point is make sure at least one of your goals isn't purely about the dollars in. When you're setting these goals, it is helpful to start by looking back at your Giving Tuesday results from last year. What worked? What didn't work? What fell flat? If your engagement was strong, but the conversion to giving lagged, maybe this year, one of your goals is to improve your calls to action. Also want to think about Giving Tuesday and how it connects to your larger year end campaign. We're really kicking that off here so it shouldn't stand alone. We want this to build momentum, and all this work that you do in the next four weeks to also be work that's paying off beyond giving Tuesday through the end of the calendar year. So if one of your goals for this year was donor retention, evaluate that. Maybe you're Giving Tuesday goal can focus on reengaging your lapsed donors or converting first time givers to recurring donors. So in short, make the goal specific, relevant, and actionable. We want clear goals because they lead to clear results, and that helps you in the future show what you achieved. Once your goals are set, we can get into a little more of the fun stuff, and that is crafting your campaign story. A great story is going to blend gratitude, urgency, and hope. That's the mix that makes people feel inspired and motivated to act. And one of the most effective ways to do that, is to pair data with emotion. So, for example, it doesn't have to be complicated. You can, say $50 provides meals for one family for an entire week. You want to tie numbers to real impact, whatever that looks like at your organization. When you're starting to craft the story, choose a visual anchor. That could be a volunteer, family that your organization has helped. It might even be somebody that works within your organization on the program side seeing day in, day out, what the what the organization is how they're helping. So take that and then see if you can include some sort of direct quote or a brief testimonial from one of those people to humanize your message. You might be wondering where are these stories going to come from? Again, four weeks to go. Start with what you have. You already have a lot of this. I promise. Talk to your program staff. Talk to volunteers who know your beneficiaries best. Talk often a lot of those most powerful stories, they're already being told inside your organization. Sometimes fundraising and marketing staff are just not always privy to all of those conversations. So, check-in, see what is happening, see what the program team is hearing. A lot of those again, the stories are already there. Your role is to really just amplify them externally. And also, you know, always a good reminder, not every story has to be a tear jerker. You know, we also want to share hopeful and uplifting stories, and that can be just as powerful. Spotlight a client who's thriving thanks to your support. You could feature a volunteer who found new purpose, in retirement through your mission. So, generally, you just wanna make sure the emotion in your story is aligning with your campaign's message. The real goal here is that you wanna humanize this campaign. You want donors to feel a connection to people, not just numbers. Once your story is ready, it's time to work on the systems. This is what makes Giving Tuesday run smoothly. Start by testing those donation forms. If your mobile form is harder to use than your grandma's remote control, it needs some work. You wanna make sure your giving forms are live, that they're mobile friendly, and that they're customized for Giving Tuesday. You wanna make sure that there are options that are easy to click for tribute giving, for matching gifts, and for easy social sharing. Those touches are what's gonna increase your engagement here. Now let's talk about matching gifts. If you already have one secured, amazing. If not, this is the right time to start lining one up. You could approach a major donor, a mid level donor. You could even approach your board as individuals or as a group. We wanna frame this as an opportunity to amplify the giving they're already planning on making, to inspire others to give as well. Goal here is again to go into Giving Tuesday being able to say something along the lines of every gift on December 3 will be doubled up to $25,000. You want the specificity, to create urgency and you want it to be very clear. And what if you have a good problem? What if you have multiple people interested? That's great. Consider using one of them as a bonus match. So line it up so that, once the first match has been reached, you can say a new donor has stepped in. They want to match the next $10,000. They are so inspired. This is a way to reenergize the campaign once the first match is met. And it can look, like it occurs day of, but you've done the work beforehand to line it up. So it it is exciting and new to donors and your volunteers and anyone that's engaging with you, but you've had it lined up the whole time. Finally, we want to test the whole donor journey. So pretend you are a first time donor. I know it's hard. You see these forms, and these websites day in, day out. Feel free to recruit someone who doesn't, someone, a friend, or a family member. Click through the emails. Look at the social posts. Look at the donation form. Does it flow? Are they telling a story together? Is it exciting? And it does it make giving easy? We want to catch those small friction points before giving Tuesday. And lastly, we wanna think about the people sides of systems. So who is monitoring, all of the donations on the day itself? Who is ready to thank donors in real time? Do you have board members or staff members that are willing day of to call to thank if there is a brand new, you know, large donor? Time to just kind of start thinking about that and evaluating what you have. You may not have all of that, and that's fine. We just need to, ahead of time, figure out what the plan is. We want to map all of this out now so that Giving Tuesday feels like a celebration and a time to connect, as much as that's possible. I know it's still still going to be a little bit of a stressful day, but we want it to not feel like a huge scramble by doing that work ahead of time. Alright. Let's talk about three weeks to go. So this is, we're getting closer to Giving Tuesday. We have worked on all of those systems and preparedness stuff Amy was talking about. Let's start building awareness and activating our ambassadors. So at this point, our goal is to make sure that everyone who knows us knows that Giving Tuesday is coming. This means your organization is leading the charge to put that information out there. You're gonna start with early awareness. Save the date email is a great way to put that out there, update your website so that, you know, it's a visual reminder every time someone is on your website, giving Tuesday is coming. Use strategic hashtags across your channels to kinda tie those things together in social media. I'm gonna encourage you to think think about things channels beyond email. So don't rely only on email to push that message out. Think about where your audience is and try to meet them there. So maybe this means that you're doing some Giving Tuesday awareness building on social media. Maybe you have a text messaging tool and could do some Giving Tuesday, text message warm up. Of course, you're bringing your authentic storytelling to all these different channels that you're using, but we wanna make sure that we are out there in front of people, that people know this is coming. Right? So they're they can't give if they don't know that the opportunity to give is happening. And we want to feel that excitement starting to build in our community and our audiences. We want staff members to be talking about it. We want board members to be talking about it. We want volunteers to know about it. Are we putting signature you know, email signatures about Giving Tuesday? Like, what are all of the ways that we can actually create that awareness? You could make this list as part of your preparedness in week four and then start actually executing that in week three, three weeks to go. When I talk about activating ambassadors, I'm really talking about, like, recruiting those board members, staff members, loyal donors, committee members, volunteers, all of those people to be peer to peer fundraisers. When we talk about this, we're saying put sample posts in their hands or in their email boxes or whatever so that they can actually be aligned with the stories that you are telling and the messages that you're telling, and it's easy for them. Like, we're reducing that friction not only on the donor experience, but also for the peer to peer fundraiser experience. You know, package up all of this stuff in a neat way and share it with them so that they can easily drop it into their social channels. And one strategy that I've seen that I think is actually really impactful and it creates a kind of magic that's hard to replicate is encouraging people to share their own stories of why they give. So, you know, I support this organization because I'm on this board, because I volunteer here, because and, like, those stories can even become something that you're amplifying. Later, we're gonna talk about that, the week of the event. So at this point, we're recruiting people to kind of think about telling their own story about their relationship with your organization, but also just to be those ambassadors, those peer to peer fundraisers, and making sure that they have the the content that they need to actually get that message out. I know I'm a lot more likely to repost something or to copy and paste something than if I have to write it from scratch myself. Right? And that's probably true for a lot of your audience as well. I do have an anecdote or a, you know, real life case study here about the Washington National Park Fund, and they're giving Tuesday last, last year. They were using JustGiving to empower their board members and volunteers to do peer to peer fundraising. And they actually were able to raise over $50,000 using this kind of coordinated storytelling across the different channels and activating those ambassadors. This is a really inspiring story, and you can see some examples of their collateral. It's actually linked in the resources section for the webinar and the docs. It's part of the end of year toolkit. So just kind of, get some examples in front of you to kinda get your creative mind going of, like, what could I how could I frame a story? How could I tell the story of my organization in a way that can be magnified by a lot of different kinds of people who have relationships with our organization as well. What makes this work is this concept of, like, the seamless technology, the compelling storytelling, and those strong relationships. Like, people love your organization. They love the work that you're doing. How can you shine that light out of all of that love and joy of the work that you're doing out into your community and amplify those stories? So, you know, those personalized campaign pages that you can do in JustGiving are really helpful. Real time updates turn GivingTuesday into kind of an event. So having those people lined up and ready to go and actually push this stuff out real time on your behalf can really help reach an audience in a community that you, maybe haven't even been able to access yet. And I know, you know, Amy talked earlier about, like, those metrics that are not driven by you know, not necessarily a fundraising metric. What are the other goals that you have? Think too. Like, how could all of these activated ambassadors help me grow the email list? How can these activated ambassadors help me meet those non fundraising goals as well? Sometimes some of our our activated ambassadors get really excited about those kind of goals. I have seen some people go really wild for those things. So think think about all those coordinated, goals that you have and how they could tap into them. The last thing that I wanna talk about that you're working on this week when we're three weeks to go to Giving Tuesday is building a content calendar. Like Amy said, on the day of and even leading up to that, we want it to feel like it's a plan that we are just executing, not something that we are reacting, that we are kind of inventing as we go, but that we have a plan and we're actually just executing a plan. We know what's coming. We know what we're gonna do. We know who's involved, and we're just able to kinda make those steps happen. So a content calendar is how you organize those ideas and the content and the channels and all of those things to make it something that you can just kinda work through like a checklist rather than maybe, like, a a stressful overwhelming event. This is an example of how you can make a content calendar and what that can kind of look like. The I think that, you know, one thing that Amy really emphasized that I love is, like, you don't have to develop a unique story for each of these touches. Right? There are many ways to repurpose one story, a volunteer story, an impact story, and make that work across a lot of different channels, and to make it really impactful. And I think, you know, especially in the information ecosystem that we all live in, hearing that story multiple times in different ways is gonna actually help it stay with us and be more impactful and even maybe turn some of that audience into ambassadors themselves because they're thinking, like, I saw this great story across all these channels. I wanna talk to people about that as well. So, your consistent storytelling across all of your content is gonna help magnify the impact of your message. And and so when you start with the save the date, you're kinda planting the seeds of getting that message out to people, and then you're gonna develop that over the period of time that you're doing this four week campaign. I think impact stories go over really well. Like, what is a great success that we've had? Spotlighting volunteers is really helpful. It helps people kinda see themselves in the work of the mission, and then kind of building up the countdown, so that people feel the energy of the campaign of Giving Tuesday is another helpful strategy. And then, of course, like, the thank you message should be kind of referring back to all of those things that you've been teeing them up for this whole time. Alright. So we're almost there. You're two weeks to go. This week is gonna be about warming up your audience. You're also gonna be doing some of the heavy lifting here to set yourself up for a nice, relaxed Thanksgiving, and ready to start Giving Tuesday with a lot of the work already done. We wanna think through your cadence, how you're going to reach people now, how you'll reach them, Giving Tuesday and throughout the rest of the week. Again, goal here is really to do the heavy lifting now. So when the day arrives, you are it's mostly plug and play. You can keep your energy then focused on what matters, which is connecting, with the community in real time and amplifying, people that are sharing your story. So let's start, by planning your emails. Cadence really matters here. You're going into a very busy time of the year, and you want to be strategic about your email outreach now, so that you're reaching people at the right time. But your you know, people are still on your email list come December 31. We don't wanna lose people, between now and then. So you've sent the save the date email, or if you haven't, you're sending that then. It's time to start working on what you'll send out about a week before giving Tuesday. It's gonna be Thanksgiving week. So, again, this is why we're doing it a week early in this, lovely world so that you can have a more relaxed, shorter week, but time to draft a pre event email. So you want to kick this off by announcing your goal, and again, make it more than dollars. Make there more be more things you can measure, so that you can update people on more metrics. Invite early gifts. Make sure that people know that any gifts they're making now are going to count towards that Giving Tuesday goal. We know, you know, the flip side of Giving Tuesday being amazing and raising so much money is that it can get noisy. Everyone's participating. Any way that you can engage with people ahead of time, you know, the week prior, is great. The early email is also going to be a chance to build some momentum. You can make sure that people know their early gift will help you start strong for Giving Tuesday, and make sure, you know, that we're sharing that on social as well. So visible, ready to respond. Going into Thanksgiving week then, we also want to take advantage of this opportunity to show gratitude. Schedule an email to send a simple thank you to all of your supporters. Think broadly about what a supporter is. It's not just a donor. It goes way beyond that and you want to extend gratitude for everyone. Doesn't need to tie directly into Giving Tuesday. You don't need to link it back here, but scheduling something to be sent the day after Thanksgiving will help keep your organization top of mind as and it will condition people to receive your emails, next week and already be thinking of you. Many people will be feeling generous and reflective, and you want to take advantage and meet them in that mindset. So schedule those emails. Schedule those thank you posts now. They can go they can all be sent out Friday after Thanksgiving while you're hopefully, you know, in cozy clothes, eating your leftovers. Next, we can talk through day of emails. So morning of, you want to kick that off in a very strong way. Wanna use a short and clear subject line. We have found again and again that subject lines under 45 characters will perform best. Let's do something big together or twenty four hours to make a difference. Should be short call to action. And this is a great place to feature one of those impact stories and a donation link right up front. So put the donation link at the beginning of the email, impact story, donation link again at the end. Not everyone's gonna scroll all the way through, so we just wanna make sure they have what they need at the beginning. Schedule an email for the afternoon of Giving Tuesday. Switch this messaging a bit to be more urgent. So if before you were sharing an impact story, we were inspiring hope, here we wanna switch, and just remind people that there's still time to make their gift and to be part of the impact. This is where you might wanna consider phrases like, we're halfway there, help us finish strong, or every dollar today is doubled, don't miss your chance to have an increased impact. Really wanna lean on urgency from the storytelling themes there and get this out, you know, late afternoon so there's still time for people to give. Finally, what do you wanna do at the end of the day? We wanna schedule an email to thank people. You can schedule a kind of bare bones email that you fill in with final results later, or the email could simply say, thank you so much for your support on Giving Tuesday. We can't wait to share the impact with you later this week. Think about again, back to your systems. How many people do you have that can are helping day of? Is it realistic for you to be able to say, you know, the dollars raised and the donation amount, or do you want to express gratitude first and then follow-up with impact when you have a little bit more time to pull those numbers together? Again, this is going to depend. If you were a team of one, your capacity is gonna be very, very different than if someone has an entire marketing team and a gift processing team. So be honest with yourself about what you can do here and plan to thank people either way. You want it to just be ready to send. You know, you might be exhausted by the end of the day, but we still wanna make sure that gets out there. So for those that maybe are wondering how they're gonna pull all of that data together, maybe there are not a lot of people in your department or team helping with that, or maybe some of your goals are a little bit more, nuanced and you're not going to be able to pull that number very quickly. You could plan a next day or two days later a follow-up, impact email to keep the energy going. You could share we raised x dollars together or here's what your generosity made possible. The quick follow-up is important and that helps a lot with donor retention and to keep new supporters engaged beyond the one day campaign. You may be hopefully busy with all sorts of gift processing and individual thank you. So do as much of this as you can ahead of time even if you don't have all of the exact figures to fill out. Go ahead and schedule it. Alright. I am back to talking about optimizing the donation experience. You can tell I spent some time in development operations. So we want to again make sure the experience is frictionless. You looked at your forms two weeks ago, but it's time to double check. Make sure that they're clean, that they're fast, and that they're mobile friendly. Again, if a form takes more than thirty seconds to complete, it's going to lose people. So take a look. Maybe your normal form requires a lot of personal information. What can you turn off for this Giving Tuesday form? If your goal is to bring new donors in, do you need their full mailing address, or if you get their phone number and their email address, is that enough information and you can fill in the rest of it later, by reaching out to them. So just look at your form critically and think about, again, you know, what can we do to make this as quick as possible. Another thing to consider is can you add a progress bar or some sort of thermometer to your giving form? This keeps donors motivated. This continues to contribute to that urgency. And, again, if your platform doesn't support that, you can get creative. I, you know, worked in an organization where there was very limited support for things like that, and we just created our own thermometers in Canva and filled them in day of and posted them as graphics online. So, again, you don't need to let perfect be the enemy of good. You can do this all sorts of different ways. It does not need to be a live, barometer or metric. But think through some way that you can show visible progress throughout the day. You wanna make your donors feel like they are part of the action. You also want to take a look and look at your form and see if it's telling any sort of mini story. Again, I know I already told you thirty seconds to get through and, give. So we don't need it to be long. We don't need the copy to be long. You do wanna make sure you're connecting a donor's gift to the impact. Maybe most of your donors are repeat supporters usually, and they know all about your organization. This is not this may not be the, you know, time for that. Maybe you're bringing new donors in now or you want new people to at least click through to the form and get an idea of who you are. So we just wanna connect the gift to impact. It could be very simple. Your donation today provides safe housing for families in crisis, or every $25 helps the student access after school tutoring. Whole goal here is to show a direct link between someone's gift and your mission, and that will help those conversion rates climb. As a quick case study, an organization called Seed Savers Exchange, simplified their giving form, and they ended up seeing a 61% increase in the average gift size. So, you know, what did they do? They had a clean design. They had very clear suggested amounts that were not you know, they thought through what those suggested amounts were, and what the default was, and they made giving very easy. So these are all things that you can do, but it's a lot harder to do if you are trying to do this the day before Giving Tuesday. So we wanna plan ahead there. And finally, let's talk about social media. Love it or hate it. Strong opinions, I'm sure, all around, but we all know that it is a very important part of Giving Tuesday. Okay. What can you do now to help yourself in the future? Let's schedule those key posts ahead of time, especially ones where you're announcing your goal, launching the campaign, and thanking your donors. You know you're going to make those posts. Go ahead and get them scheduled. On the day itself, you wanna be able to be engaging live. So a lot of this work ahead of time is to free you up so that when you are seeing amazing traction on a peer to peer campaign that you're able to amplify something like that. You want to be able to reply to comments, reshare supporter posts, celebrate all of those milestones in real time. You want the day to feel electric, and I I get, you know, again, we're planning out things to feel authentic and electric, but, if you are able to actually be interacting with others on the day of, that will come naturally. So when you're drafting your plan posts, can you want to lead with a strong call to action. Donate now to keep a 100 kids fed or help us reach our $25,000 goal before midnight. If you have a match, you know, include that information. And how to make it fun? You can highlight the humans behind the campaign. You have donors. You have volunteers. You have board members. You have people who have dedicated their lives to working for your organization. Ask them ahead of time. You know, why do they do that? You know, get a short quote. Get see if they have a photo. Ask why they give or volunteer. You wanna have these sorts of things ready to post, to make your feed feel personal. So it's not just ask, ask, ask. So we wanna be sharing why other people are giving. I will say just kind of personal experience. This is a great thing for board members to do. They love to post things on LinkedIn and Facebook. So give them the chance to show off that they are a board member. Equip them with what they need to explain why the mission is important to them, and let them speak for you here. You know, give them something to to say and to put out there, and then you can amplify that. And then just the the last kind of quick tip, which is to start strong, with the captions. Each social platform can cut off text differently. So, ideally, check that first on each individual platform. But at the very least, start with your your first sentence as a hook. So we wanna lead with a powerful line and then share the details below. You don't know how much someone will see, and then you don't know if they'll click through to see the rest of it. So we wanna make sure they're seeing the most important part first. Thank you. I I just was thinking about when you were talking about, like, how much how impactful it can be when board members are start telling their own stories of why they're involved and how they're involved. And, just get I had so many fond nonprofit memories when I started thinking about that, so thanks for that kind of nostalgia. Alright. So now we are in the week of Giving Tuesday. Because you have done so much planning and strategizing up to this point, we we hope that this will kind of unfold as we've planned. But because you have so much collateral created, you have so many posts scheduled, you have so many people engaged, Even if things kinda don't go the way that you're hoping and you have to react to some situations, you are going to have so much behind you to kinda keep that energy going. So keep in mind, we've been planning so that we are not panicking in this week. This is where all of that planning pays off. Your campaign is going live. So we've told you, I think, a 100 times at this point to double check all the links, double check all the posts, double check the donation forms, check it on browser, check it on web. I'm still checking it the day before. I am. I'm just gonna check it one more time, just to make sure everything is going well. You're gonna create a schedule for your Giving Tuesday. Here's a sample here. This may not be right. You may be editing it for your organization and your particular situation, but think about what is the cadence of this that's happening throughout the day. A lot of these things, you have already prescheduled, and you are just making sure that the email goes out at the right time, that the social post hits at the right time, and then responding to engagement. You know, if someone shares something really helpful or thoughtful or compelling in the comments of the social post that you're making, maybe you're reacting that. Maybe people are sharing their own stories and you're resharing them as they're happening. Like, try to find that organic energy that you can you can be kind of building on to create that engagement. If I am watching someone's giving day, because I you know, like all of us, like, I'm involved in a lot of nonprofit organizations in my personal life. And if I'm seeing them share stories that resonate with me, and then I'm resharing them or I'm telling my own story, like, I foster kittens for the local animal shelter, and I might share a cute photo of a kitten that I fostered and my friend adopted and look how big this cat has grown. Like, I would be so honored if that organization reshared that story that I shared. So think about, like, how are we going back and forth? How are we telling these stories together? And and just have a structure to your day. What do I need to do when? So that all of the things that you've put all this effort into actually happen and that you're making the most of the impact as people are starting to respond to what you're putting out. Make sure there's a time in your day. I have it here at 9AM, but you are calling and texting your biggest advocates. These maybe are your board members. Maybe they're the king and queen of your volunteer community. Maybe they are your your most active alumni. Who is talking about you on social media? You've queued them up during that that activate ambassador phase of this plan. Now you're gonna actually personally talk to them and say, hey. Did you post that? You know, that that was really great. That is anybody talking to you about it? You know, have those conversations and make them feel like something is actually happening. They're part of it throughout the day. Pushing out the stories about progress. I love Amy's example about even just making your own thermometer in a program because you don't have a tech tool that will do it live for you. Get creative about kinda how you're telling the progress, but make sure that those stories about progress are going out because that really keeps the momentum going, throughout the day. And then give these kinda later in the day reminders and wrap up opportunities. I know I get busy with work early in the day, and then I'll often see that 7PM email or that 7PM post that's like, oh, right. I did mean to support my local, you know, beloved arts nonprofit today. I wanna I want my name to be on that list. So, thanks for the reminder at 7PM after I finish making dinner for the family, to actually hurry up and click that donation button. Engage engaging your audience in real time, sharing those photos and progress updates, thanking donors as gifts are coming in, especially if you are leveraging kind of matching gifts and challenge gifts throughout the day. Are there stories we can tell about those people? If something really extraordinary happens, like, I was working with a matching gift owner, and then his brother wanted to challenge him to match more. So, like, if you have things like that happening, tell those stories. A lot of times that kind of camaraderie and competitive edge can become, you know, can really take off on social media if you were to experience something like that. Share any kind of I gave messages. Like, I mentioned, you know, if I post something about how I support this organization, how meaningful it is, if they can repost it or if they respond to it, it makes me feel really seen. And part of that is, like, with Giving Tuesday, stewardship starts immediately. Right? So we need to immediately start engaging people in what is coming next. Here's some ideas about real time engagement and celebration, talking about the photos, thanking the donors as things are happening, encouraging your board members to kinda engage and and make sure that they know, like, I'm not just asking you to do this, to do it, but because it actually teaches the algorithm that the stories that we are putting out are important, and then that drives engagement because you start to grow your reach. So, you know, make sure that that they know why you're asking them to repost and comment on all your posts, that it's actually that's how social media works to get your your product or your messages in front of other people. And then, of course, like, stories and reels and short videos can provide a lot of energy, to your campaign. You don't have you you might be out there recording live on the day of Giving Tuesday. I won't say that you won't be out there, but they can be prerecorded. And sometimes, you know, that's even more impact to to kinda have a lot of those short videos ready to go. I mentioned a second ago, you know, stewardship kinda starts right away. So as we are executing this brilliant plan that we put together, we're making all these strategy pieces go where they need to go and doing all that incredible impactful storytelling. We're also already switching to the next phase. We wanna be following up with those GivingTuesday donors very quickly. Pretty pretty normal recommendation is, like, have more contact with them within forty two to seventy two hours forty eight to seventy two hours. Wow. Make sure that you're thanking them specifically for supporting Giving Tuesday. If you have, the impact story, like, together, we are feeding as many families. I know Amy sort of talked about having that stuff ready to go. But having those stewardship pieces, like, roll out in a timely manner really helps with retention. I work with organizations all the time who are struggling with the idea that they put effort into Giving Tuesday or another Giving Day, and then how do we turn that into a retained donor year over year? Those first ninety days of that donor journey are gonna be the most sensitive time to build that relationship, show the impact of the work, thank them, make them feel like they're part of the community, engage them, send updates, do outreach from board members, maybe have even a get to know us kind of event at your office or something, you know, program site, whatever is gonna be impactful for your organization. There are so many ways to engage people. So Giving Tuesday happens. We raise money. We raise friends. We we grow our audience, but we also want to quickly turn to how do we hold on to the important parts of what we have talked about and done during this time period. Yes. Make sure that you are kinda holding on to those people for the long term. I think that's the important thing that I want you to think about the day after Giving Tuesday, is, like, what comes next over the next ninety days. Okay. Well, key takeaways here. You wanna start with clear goals and a strong story. That's the work to do now, and that's work that will pay off beyond Giving Tuesday. That can, kind of carry you through December if it's a cohesive story that you want to be putting out there for all of your year end fundraiser fundraising. You wanna engage your ambassadors now. This is the right time. Nobody likes to feel like it's kind of a last minute ad, so get those asks out there and don't be afraid to ask a lot of people. There's a lot of different ways, that everyone can engage. You can ask for multiple matches. That's a great problem if lots of people say yes. There's plenty of ways to leverage that. You wanna communicate consistently across channels. And, again, that kind of goes back to that that strong story. Everything you're saying, whether it's on Facebook or LinkedIn or via email, should be linking back to that story. We want it to look and sound, like you're sharing the same message just via different channels. You wanna make giving frictionless. We know people really don't spend a lot of time trying to buy things. So it's the same with giving. You want it to be easy. If there's a way to link Apple Pay with your account, look into that now. You know, if you want people to be able to give via Venmo, check into that now. Make sure you're doing what you can now so that it is really, really, really simple for someone to give once they land on your donation page. And finally, you wanna thank quickly and personally. I know sometimes those two things are antithetical. It's hard to do both at one time, but make it feel personal. Make sure and that's back to what Jess said. Link it back to Giving Tuesday. You know, if someone's a first time donor, note that, you know, to welcome them in, thank them for giving for the first time. It doesn't have to actually be personal to feel personal, so think through ahead of time how you can make that happen. And, again, Giving Tuesday, it's really the launch gift to the end of the year. So, you know, take take what you learn from this, take those lessons, and from there, you can pivot and wrap things up strong. So I know we have a few questions. I wanna make sure we, have some time to get to those. See. There is one in the chat that has been getting a lot of energy, Amy, that I'd love to ask you. Great. So it's a couple people are kinda echoing this idea. What if this is our first year doing Giving Tuesday? We don't have maybe very much of an existing donor base. So we're first timers. We're really new. It's probably not gonna work out for us to have an anchor gift or a matching gift. We may not have year over year data. How how do we think about GivingTuesday the metrics and the planning when we maybe are starting really, really from scratch? And I think this dovetails with some of your experience a little bit, so maybe you have some insights you can share. It does. And I'll say, think about it as kind of a fun opportunity. You really don't have much to prove. You're starting you you can be creative and anything you're doing this year is building on what was done the year before, which was nothing. So just first, I always wanna kind of emphasize that sort of shift in how you are thinking about things. And then you don't need a match. You know, you can you can tell that story authentically. You know, this is our first Giving Tuesday. Help us reach $10,000. Help us expand from 200 donors to 250 donors. You can be upfront, honestly, with your, with your supporters, and, they don't need to expect the same thing from you that they expect from a national nonprofit with lots of chapters. So I do think thinking about those metrics is still important. I would aim and, again, this just comes from kind of a fundraising background. I would I would try to create realistic goals, but if you were not sure what that looks like, I would set them a little lower than you think. You want this data for next year. And, again, anything is a huge increase over what had happened previously. But I would keep it as simple as possible. I don't think you need a match. It's a nice to have. It's not a must have. And this is where I would really lean on if you have volunteers, if you're more of a grassroots organization, what can the other people around you do to amplify what your your mission? It doesn't need to be big to be successful. And then next year, you'll have metrics to go off of, and you'll have a lot more information. Yeah. And keep in mind, we're encouraging you to set non fundraising goals. So if you are starting with very little audience, not many names in your donor database, this is a great opportunity to say, I wanna grow my email list by 10%. Or, you know, that is long term part of feeding your sustainable pipeline. Right? So keep in mind, like, it is an opportunity in all those ways. And it's it's a missed opportunity if you only think about it in terms of fundraising. You will get some dollars raised, but this is way too much effort to put in for some one time gift. So you that is the right way. And Jess is completely right. Growing your email list is honestly going to pay more in returns than bringing on a few new first time $20 donors. So Yeah. We're also getting a lot of questions about how do I coordinate, Giving Tuesday with year end giving. I have direct mail appeals going out. I'm worried about donor fatigue. And I think, you know, I feel excited when you say you have year end appeals going out at the same time, because that means that a lot of those stories and impact things that you can borrow from to feed your Giving Tuesday content already exist. There's probably photos picked out. There's people talking about it. There's energy. Maybe major gift officers are talking to their prospects about the same thing. When you all are speaking with one voice across your organization, it amplifies your message so much. So see it as an opportunity to bring more channels to that year end campaign, and to kind of launch the year end campaign even. Like, maybe this is the start of year end campaign. Maybe your direct mail appeals are hitting right after Giving Tuesday. And so it really you know, think about how do we time things so that we are amplifying our message and we're kind of telling better stories with a louder microphone, with a bigger platform, rather than seeing it as something that's competing across the organization. In terms of donor fatigue, I think, you know, Amy has said it a bunch of times, but I think it's so important is to bring that human story to the storytelling that you're doing. That's what makes it really impactful where people can see themselves in your mission. They can see themselves in the volunteers. They can see themselves in the work that's happening, especially if there's board members and donors telling their story about why they love it, why they love whatever your organization is doing. I think that that humanity kind of takes over the idea of donor fatigue because it is we are we as humans are interested in each other, and when we can kind of bring that humanity to our storytelling for fundraising and for audience building, it can be really impactful. Do you have anything, Amy, that you would add to that concept of, like, don't Giving Tuesday and and year end stuff and donor fatigue in general and year end fundraising? I would, echo everything you said and just also, you know, consider your audience. Sometimes you're Giving Tuesday audience isn't the same as your direct mail audience, and that kind of goes back to your goals and your plan. If what you're trying to do is widen your reach, to reach new people, they're not, you know, they're they're not getting your end of year mail campaign. So there's a few, you know, different ways to consider that. Giving Tuesday donors tend to be a little less connected with your organization because of that peer to peer fundraising, and that is why it's a great opportunity to bring people in. But one thing to remember is that those that you're reaching, especially just via social, aren't always getting your other messaging. So, it's a balance, but, definitely just one one thing to, keep in mind there. Kind of on that same thinking of your audience, there was a question about, that's that's much like, a bit more of a logistical question. But, for your peer to peer fundraisers, should the sample posts that we're giving them be different from what your organization is planning to, share? And I will just add, but I would definitely I would say yes. You want to give them, again, just a starting point. We don't they don't need you you don't need to write a beautiful post from each individual board member or each organization that you work with, but having, some sort of kind of script or template that they can plug in that comes from their individual perspective, sometimes it shares your message to in ways that you're not going to get that reach just from your organization. So I think, again, bringing those that humanity into it and allowing someone to share why, why day care and why somebody else should, is a great strategy, and it does kinda differentiate those posts from your own organization's posts. Yeah. I totally agree. It should it should sound like we're talking about the same work. Right? Like, we're talking about the same organization, but it should sound like different voices. And it, you know, it's fine for the photos to be different. Like, maybe focus more on a person handing a box of food versus, you know, like like, we can have different aesthetics for how those messages look. I think the important thing is that you set that you set that message in week one of what story you're telling, and you're gonna tell that story multiple times in different ways. And so the samples that you're giving, the voice that you're you're using is kind of, like, as a supporter, as someone who's part of this community but not inside the organization. Here's what I love about this. Whereas the stuff that you're putting out from the organization is gonna have a different voice, a different tone. It's gonna be on brand. You're gonna be, you know, telling the message in a slightly different way. So, I would hope that they would end up aligned and certainly, like, going back to that humanity, we can't say it enough because it's so important in the in the messages that your supporters are putting out in those templates. But, you know, let them be unique and share their own their own experiences because that's really it's impactful to me when I hear why my friends and family love the organizations that they do. I love to know why my family member is so passionate about supporting the friends of the library book book sale. That's meaningful to me because I know that person. I love them. I know their life story, and hearing how that experience dovetails is really impactful to me in ways that I can't even imagine before I hear them talk about it. So try and put yourself in those shoes in terms of how you frame those different messages. Do we I know we're right at time. So probably if you put good questions in the q and a, we probably have to follow-up via email because we're running out of time. But I did wanna thank everybody so much for being here with us. This is something clearly we're really excited and passionate about. Abby, do you wanna bring us home? Yes. Thank you so much. Had a quick issue with my, with my mute button. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jessica and Amy. I know that this has been, such a great impact filled session. Appreciate everyone for your thoughtful questions. We'll be sure to follow-up with anyone we didn't get to, by email, and Jessica and Amy have thrown their email addresses up there. I've also opened a poll in case you're learning a little bit more about what Blackbaud can do to help you transform your year end fundraising strategy, and make sure that 2026 gets off to the perfect start. So feel free. You can answer that in the poll section to the right of the messages. As a reminder, you will receive a link to the recording of this webinar. You're able to share that with your team, forward it to whoever you would like, and we really appreciate you taking the time to spend this past hour with us. We know that this is the busiest season, and we're so excited to hear a little bit about your results and how your year end went. So without further ado, we will close this off, and thank you everyone so very much. Have a great one.