6 Steps to Maximize Your Giving Tuesday Results

Instead of relying solely on direct solicitations this Giving Tuesday, see a dramatic spike in your income by getting donors to fundraise on your behalf. This year, kick off your holiday fundraising season with a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

The buzz around Giving Tuesday makes it the perfect time to ask supporters to create a personal fundraising page. When supporters ask their friends and family for gifts, they’re often able to raise much more than they could give out of their own pockets. Follow these tips to hit the ground running this holiday season with an awesome Giving Tuesday peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.

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1. Set an Overall Campaign Goal

Always set a goal for your fundraising campaign. First, determine what exactly you want to raise money for this holiday season. Are you funding a tangible, programmatic result, like a hospital in Ethiopia? Or are you raising money to be distributed more broadly? Perhaps you want to expand your operations in the next six months. Once you determine how much it would cost to fund your objective, that is your overall campaign goal.

The next step is to estimate how many supporters would realistically fundraise for your campaign, and how much each would have to raise to hit that goal. Finalize your monetary campaign goal based on whether it’s actually achievable. Keep in mind that supporters want to feel like they can actually help your campaign succeed, so make sure your goal is feasible.

Pro Tip: Consider setting an internal goal along with a public goal. Your internal goal, known only among your staff, can be higher than your public target to help motivate your team as the campaign progresses. Once you reach your public goal, you can raise it to match your internal goal and rally your community for one last fundraising stretch.

2. Brand Your Donation and Fundraising Pages

Create custom donation and fundraising pages branded specifically for your Giving Tuesday or year-end campaign. Not only does it reassure people that their donations are going to the right campaign, but the appropriate imagery and copy can sustain a donor’s emotional drive to give from start to finish. Consider this: on average, a branded donation page receives five times as many donations, and collects nearly $15,000 more than a generic donation page.

Read More: Only One Donation Form? You Might Be Missing Out

3. Prepare Your Content Ahead of Time

Every peer-to-peer fundraising campaign needs powerful content that generates social shares, drives engagement, and reels in donations. In the time leading up to Giving Tuesday, create and distribute materials like:

• Blog posts and impact stories to demonstrate your program’s success
• Campaign video
• Photos of your organization’s work
• eCard images for dedicated gifts
• Testimonials from constituents, volunteers, staff, or board members
• Infographics with compelling data about your cause

You also want to create resources for your fundraisers that help them get the word out about their personal campaigns and attract donations. After all, their personal fundraising success directly impacts your campaign’s bottom line. Prepare the following materials ahead of time, so that you can distribute them both on Giving Tuesday and in the days leading up to it.

• Giving Tuesday (or year-end campaign-themed) sample emails for fundraisers to send their networks
• Sample social media posts and tweets
• Design resources for social media accounts, like cover photos and profile images

4. Give Fundraisers Creative Campaign Ideas

One thing that makes peer-to-peer fundraising so appealing is that it gives supporters the chance to personalize their own campaigns. Whether they decide to do a sit up for every dollar raised, or buzz their hair (or grow it!) if they reach their goal, fundraisers can come up with their own campaign ideas that excite their friends and attract donations.

That said, your supporters might need some help brainstorming. When recruiting fundraisers, give them some campaign ideas to jog their creativity. Clarify any overall rules or guidelines for their campaigns, and then consider offering a list of possible fundraising ideas they can implement.

Take this example from Choice Humanitarian. On Giving Tuesday 2014, the organization launched their month-long, year-end peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, #Rally2EndPoverty. To make the initiative fun and exciting, they encouraged fundraisers to complete a challenge within a 24-hour period. They created this awesome video to provide supporters personal campaign ideas.

5. Plan a Soft Launch Leading Up to Giving Tuesday

While you can open your campaign on Giving Tuesday, consider having a prior “soft launch” period during which you bring core supporters into the campaign. The week before December 3rd, start asking your loyal volunteers, donors, staffers, past power fundraisers, and social media influencers to create personal fundraising pages and help you get a head start on campaign progress. On top of building momentum, you are communicating that their involvement is critical to your holiday fundraising efforts.

6. Make This Your Year-End P2P Fundraising Campaign

Get more bang from your Giving Tuesday campaign when you use it as a hard launch date for your bigger, year-end fundraising efforts. By incorporating Giving Tuesday into your holiday fundraising efforts, you can leverage the excitement around the day to promote your larger initiative and muster a strong kickoff. You can then build off of this momentum to achieve your year-end fundraising goal in the following weeks.

Peer-to-peer fundraising can take your Giving Tuesday and year-end initiative to the next level. Instead of relying on an influx of direct solicitations, turn donors into fundraisers, expand your network, and increase the number of donations you receive this holiday season.

Read Next: Leverage Giving Tuesday to Boost Your Campaigns