With GivingTuesday 2024 fast approaching, is your nonprofit prepared?
While you may have been planning your GivingTuesday campaign for months, have you thought about how you’re going to monitor it and measure your success? Yes, the amount of money raised is a good metric to track, but it isn’t the only way that you should be measuring your campaign.
With strong campaign monitoring strategies, you can both maximize your GivingTuesday 2024 fundraising efforts and turn that momentum into a long-term impact for your organization.
What is GivingTuesday 2024?
GivingTuesday is an international effort that fosters “radical generosity.” Since 2012, GivingTuesday been turning gratitude into action on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, and it marks the unofficial start of the end-of-year giving season. GivingTuesday 2024 will be on December 3rd.
GivingTuesday harnesses the spirit of goodwill and giving around the holiday season to inspire people to give in any way they can, from offering their care, time, and effort to others in their neighborhoods to donating money to nonprofits and charitable organizations. As a nonprofit, you want to take advantage of this unique opportunity!
Participating in GivingTuesday doesn’t have any specific requirements. There’s no registration, and you can run your fundraisers on whatever donation platform fits your organization’s needs. However, we highly recommend using #givingtuesday2024 and #givingtuesday on social media so that it’s easier for potential supporters to find you.
Why is GivingTuesday 2024 Important?
Most of the time, your nonprofit has to find new donors. However, on GivingTuesday, new donors come to you! GivingTuesday is one of the rare occasions when people who are otherwise not particularly active in philanthropy may be looking for an organization to support. Make sure they find you!
As you roll out your GivingTuesday 2024 campaign, it will be important for your nonprofit to track it. Measuring your GivingTuesday campaign allows your organization to:
- Attract new supporters
- Raise more money
- Learn more about your audience
- Optimize future marketing, recruitment, and fundraising campaigns
GivingTuesday 2024 is a one-off event, but it has the potential to make a lasting impression on your organization if you monitor and measure your campaign properly.
How to Monitor and Measure Your GivingTuesday 2024 Campaign
Don’t just launch your GivingTuesday 2024 campaign and hope for the best. To maximize the funds you raise and harness GivingTuesday’s momentum for long-term impact, you will have to monitor your campaign carefully.
Follow these 5 steps to make sure your organization makes the most of GivingTuesday 2024:
Set Clear Goals Before You Begin
People want to know where their money is going, so set clear goals for your GivingTuesday 2024 campaign before you launch it.
Consider the following factors:
- Give your campaign a core focus, such as a specific theme, program, or beneficiary segment.
- Target your audience. While you want to reach as many people as possible, donor conversion rates will be better if you reach out to specific demographics. GivingTuesday is a great time to reach out to less active supporter segments, as more people will be looking for causes to support, and re-engage one-time donors.
- Fundraising Needs. Determine exactly how much money you need to raise and create a breakdown that shows where each dollar will go.
- Articulate your organization’s past impact and project the specific impact this campaign will have.
- Back up your claims with emotionally engaging case studies and compelling data.
- Past Performance. As you build your 2024 GivingTuesday campaign, look back at previous fundraising initiatives to see if there are any insights that you can glean. What messages have resonated with your audience in the past?
- Internal Goals. Set internal GivingTuesday to reach goals. Don’t limit yourself to thinking solely in terms of money raised. When deployed properly, a GivingTuesday campaign can generate long-term growth. What do you want to learn about your audience? How many new supporters do you want to reach? What demographics are you looking to engage?
With a strong plan in place, you can be fully prepared to monitor and measure your Giving Tuesday 2024 campaign.
Prepare Your Social Media Accounts
Social media will be your primary vehicle for reaching both new and established supporters on GivingTuesday, and it will also play a vital role in tracking your campaign’s progress.
On GivingTuesday 2024, you will be able to use social media to tell your story, drive donations, and update your audience on the fundraising campaign, as well as gather valuable analytics. So, take some time before GivingTuesday to make sure your accounts are ready.
To prepare your social media accounts for GivingTuesday 2024, be sure to:
- Create engaging content. Don’t wing your content strategy! Be prepared with multiple forms of platform-relevant content (i.e., stories, videos, photos, infographics, etc.) for all of your social media accounts. Make sure each piece of content helps tell your organization’s story and articulates your GivingTuesday goals in a way that will resonate with your audience. Appeal to both the head and the heart, and make sure your content stands out. GivingTuesday is a great opportunity to engage supporters, but since so many organizations will participate, you want to do your best to stand out and grab your audience!
- Pin important content. Make sure that new followers can quickly and easily understand what your organization is about! Pin 1–3 posts at the top of your account that introduce your organization, your mission, and your impact on new supporters.
- Build an online community through group chats. Take advantage of group chat options like Instagram’s broadcast channels, Facebook groups, Discord, and Reddit. On GivingTuesday, you can use these group chats to drive donations, give live updates on the campaign, and get real-time feedback from your supporters.
With these social media best practices, you will be set up for success on GivingTuesday 2024.
Set Up Tracking Codes
Tracking codes are one of the best ways to monitor your audience’s activities on GivingTuesday. Take advantage of Google’s Campaign URL builder to attach a tracking code to social media and email links. This way, you will know exactly how new supporters found you and which messages compelled them to take action.
Ensure IT Capacity
A successful GivingTuesday 2024 campaign will drive a whole wave of supporters, both old and new, to your website and donation platforms. Make sure that your system can handle this increased traffic and track data in a meaningful way.
Reach out to your IT staff and ask the following questions:
- How much traffic can the website handle?
- How will donations be processed on GivingTuesday?
- How can I get real-time donation updates?
Having a plan for the IT side of online giving will make sure that you can take the action you need to on GivingTuesday itself.
Leverage Analytics
Analytics play a key role in measuring and monitoring your GivingTuesday 2024 campaign. Most social media platforms have robust analytics features, but you will also want to make sure you enable Google Analytics on your website. It’s free to use, and you can gain valuable insights!
With your social media analytics, you will be able to:
- See how many people engaged with your content
- Learn which content drove the most engagement
- Understand which demographics engaged most with your content
- Grasp how wide your social media reach is
With Google Analytics, you will be able to:
- See how many people visited your website
- Track how visitors found your website
- Learn which landing pages users visited
- Understand which demographics visited your website
- Analyze when visitors stopped engaging with your website
- Discover when potential donors fell out of the funnel
- Understand your visitors’ interests and search history
While all of these data points are valuable, how do they translate to action? Your social media and Google Analytics strategy should be two-fold: real-time responses on GivingTuesday and post-campaign analysis to improve other fundraisers (especially the critical end-of-year-giving push that follows GivingTuesday). On GivingTuesday, keep a close eye on your analytics to adjust your content strategy if necessary and update your supporters throughout the day.
After GivingTuesday, harness those analytics to keep the energy going. You will likely have an influx of new supporters, and analytics can help you understand what motivates them and how to keep them engaged, turning one-time donors into long-term givers. You can also review GivingTuesday analytics to see which supporter segments need increased outreach and learn how to optimize future fundraisers.
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