Crowdfunding, Fundraising, Giving Tuesday

See How This Giving Tuesday Storytelling Campaign Increased YoY Donations by $40,000

Each month, we invite you to get inspired by a unique and timely campaign that shows exactly how to use the Classy giving platform to the fullest.

November kicks off the most impactful giving season of the year, starting with Giving Tuesday.

Grab Your 3-Month Giving Tuesday Checklist

As we continue to break down the factors that make particular fundraising campaigns stand out, it only makes sense to highlight one of the most memorable Giving Tuesday campaigns of 2020.

The Younique Foundation’s Giving Tuesday crowdfunding campaign combined the power of storytelling with a seamless donor experience, resulting in a donation volume increase from $9,000 in 2019 to $50,000 in 2020 on Classy.

This campaign showcased captivating authenticity and reflected a strong partnership between The Younique Foundation and Classy’s customer support team.

Read on to discover how a strong story, tailored coaching, and advanced digital design tools brought this campaign to life for one of our most successful fundraising organizations on Classy.

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Meet The Younique Foundation

Mission: Inspire hope in women who were sexually abused as children or adolescents by providing healing services through educational retreats, support groups, and online resources.

Cause Sector: Human Services

Employee Count: 58

Location: Lehi, Utah

Years on Classy: 3

Connect with The Younique Foundation on Instagram

The Value of a Giving Tuesday Storytelling Campaign

Giving Tuesday is the time to attract supporters who may be looking for new causes to connect with. Unlock the generosity of donors worldwide by creating a strong tie between their gift and the actionable outcome of that gift on your cause.

Capture the interest of anyone who visits your page by explaining the challenge you’re facing and how it requires a community of loyal donors to eradicate it. Just as popular brands use compelling advertisements with strong stories to win over customers, nonprofits can use a crowdfunding model to inspire support in similar ways. Emotional connections influence donor behavior and drive the ultimate decision on whether or not to make a donation or influence their networks to do the same.

See a Giving Tuesday Storytelling Campaign In Action

Learn how The Younique Foundation turned their storytelling skills and the knowledge they gained from Classy’s coaching and free resources into an unforgettable 2020 Giving Tuesday campaign. Our full breakdown will help you do the same.

How Classy’s Crowdfunding Tools and Coaching Led to Big Results

The Younique Foundation trusts Classy’s giving platform to activate new donors with actionable and compelling fundraising campaigns. Here’s a deeper look at this crowdfunding campaign example:

Campaign Goal: Help 170 survivors of child sexual abuse on their healing journey through The Haven Retreat, a program that helps heal childhood trauma with clinical experiences, healthy meals, and educational materials.

Method: The Younique Foundation advanced their storytelling strategy by transitioning from a single Giving Tuesday donation page to a dedicated crowdfunding campaign. Complete with a beautifully designed hero block that clearly outlined the needs of the cause, the campaign successfully mobilized new and existing donors to get involved.

The header block displayed the number of supporters joining together to make an impact, the number of days left in the campaign, and the progress they’re steadily making toward their goal of $35,000. The Younique Foundation strategically placed this information front and center for donors, leading into the call to action, “Donate Now.”

Showcasing the generosity of their donors also helped The Younique Foundation motivate more people to get involved. Social proof is powerful for a campaign. Supporters are more likely to donate if other people do, especially if you’re trying to capture the final handful of donations to cross your fundraising finish line.

In big, bold letters, donors quickly learned that one in four women endure the trauma of child sexual abuse. They were also presented with a beautifully produced video of a survivor and her journey through The Haven Retreat.

The Younique Foundation taps into the power of storytelling to:
1. Explain the broader issue to donors with startling statistics.
2. Introduce a personal story from Martha, child sexual abuse survivor, to pull at emotional heartstrings and give a face to the cause.
3. Use different font styles and spacing to make certain story elements stand out, even if people scroll quickly.

Tools to Make It Happen: The Younique Foundation established their crowdfunding campaign on Classy to give their cause the spotlight it deserves.

Classy’s crowdfunding campaigns serve as giving microsites to help nonprofits kick off the year-end giving season. With mobile-optimized pages and flexible payment options, these campaigns allow supporters to choose how to get involved in a cause. The Younique Foundation incorporated their unique branding in just a few clicks with Classy’s intuitive campaign editor and carried that branding through their donation receipts.

Their team also used impact blocks to tie each specific donation amount to the tangible support it provides. Donors had the option to give one-time or monthly, which led to 113 new recurring donors. Several payment options helped convert more supporters from mobile devices, and a live activity wall brought the experience together by showcasing the action all day.

Takeaways to Tell Your Story Through a Strong Giving Tuesday Campaign

Tell Donors How Impactful Their Actions Are

Donors are motivated by knowing the exact impact of their donation and will reconsider their donation if that’s not immediately clear. Highlight your goal with a progress bar to communicate how far you have to go when someone arrives on the page.

Concisely tell your story through compelling visuals and customized impact blocks that tie donation amounts to specific actions donors feel connected to. Impact blocks help people understand more about your nonprofit’s work in a format that’s optimized for the online viewer.

We love how The Younique Foundation did this by giving donors the option to take specific actions, such as providing healthy meals to survivors. Providing several paths like this may pull in a chef or mother who loves to cook for her family. At the same time, the option to offer educational materials may appeal more to someone who was a teacher or feels a close tie to that profession.

Select giving levels that fit your organization. Evaluate trends across your donor base to identify suggested donation amounts that motivate larger gifts and help you raise more. Also, consider dividing your general email list into subcategories to serve different giving levels to different donors.

2. Show and Tell Your Story in Authentic Ways

The Younique Foundation did an incredible job curating the story they wanted to tell. They explain their mission and narrow it down to a specific program they are asking donors to support.

They then go a step further by bringing a survivor’s story to the forefront through a video and captivating image. The visuals introduce new supporters to The Younique Foundation’s cause in a meaningful way while also reminding existing donors whom they’re supporting.

Use this approach to bring a raw, personal touch to your campaigns and leave donors with an impression that lasts long after they’ve donated. Especially around Giving Tuesday, give donors a bite-size portion of what matters most to your organization at that moment to help them organically advocate for it to their internal networks.

3. Provide Options and Multiple Paths to Give

Make the donation experience feel like any other transaction your donors are used to completing by offering flexible payment options like PayPal and Venmo. Instead of waiting until they’re in front of a computer or have a credit card in hand, allow donors to complete donations from anywhere, on any device.

There’s far less risk of missing out on a completed donation when the checkout process moves quickly and seamlessly. At the same time, nonprofits can also get creative about the donation frequencies they offer donors.

Our 2021 Recurring Donor Sentiment Report found that the top incentive to donate on a recurring basis was the affordability of breaking up donations over time.

The subscription economy paves the way for donors to participate in recurring giving programs and view them as a way to subscribe to causes they care about in a cost-friendly manner. Offer donors the option to give on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly cadence to provide any donor with the most convenient donation path.

Learn More About Classy’s Recurring Gift Frequencies

4. Show Appreciation at Every Step

The Younique Foundation makes sure donors know how much they are valued on Giving Tuesday. That supports a long-term strategy to steward them through year-end giving and into the new year.

Their team thanks donors at the top of the donation page before they’ve even completed a gift, reiterating the impact they’re having on healing survivors of sexual abuse. They also use Classy’s activity wall to comment and interact with individual donations as an added touch.
These moments matter to donors and result in increased donation volume when applied thoughtfully.

Continue Learning With Classy Academy

Classy Academy is your opportunity to expand your fundraising knowledge on the topics that interest you most, right from the comfort of your home or office. These free on-demand courses hosted by Classy’s team of experts make it simple to apply new techniques and approaches, like we covered in this post, to help you succeed in anything you put your mind to.

Whether this is your first time taking part in Giving Tuesday or if you’ve participated for years, we have plenty of resources to meet your needs. We’re here to ensure you can have the best global day of giving yet.

Kick-off your year-end fundraising strong, with a few of our favorite giving season resources:

Connect to More Donors This Giving Tuesday

Tell your authentic story on the biggest stage available this Giving Tuesday through a Classy campaign, and make a meaningful impact on the challenges you’re working so hard to solve.

Next month, be sure to check back for another campaign example to keep your fundraising fresh and inspired by new ideas.