On #GivingTuesday, Thank, Don’t Ask
Earlier this week I took my traditional pot shot at #GivingTuesday, suggesting one might better focus on real fundraising, like growing a monthly giving program.
Somewhat to my surprise, those who commented seemed to share my skepticism. Some favored a ‘#MonthlyGivingMonday’.
But I was really taken by a great idea suggested by Claire Axelrad, a jujitsu idea really — instead of resisting and griping about #GivingTuesday, why not hijack it?! Capitalize on its visibility and convert it into ‘#GivingThanksTuesday’.
In other words, don’t ask for a symbolic contribution on the day; instead, make a heartfelt gesture of thanks to your donors. A big ‘Thank you’ day!
In fact, take that a step further … make it an entire day your organization devotes exclusively to carefully thinking through how you will improve your donor acknowledgement, service and responsiveness from top to bottom … and committing to some implementation steps.
Now I could really get behind ‘#GivingThanksTuesday’! How about you?
Tom
P.S. Need some inspiration about thanking donors? Check out Gratitude Camp, running (virtually) from Sep 19 to 30.
6 responses to “On #GivingTuesday, Thank, Don’t Ask”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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We’ve been doing that since #GivingTuesday came to the UK two years ago; we didn’t have a lack of things to ask supporters for in December, but we did have a challenge around helping staff connect with supporters. So we’ve used the momentum of the noise around #GivingTuesdsy to have those conversations about the importance of giving internally. We get the entire charity (senior management, services staff, finance, IT, and, of course, fundraising, although fundraisers made up only half of our participants on the day) to take time to write hand-written thank you letters to supporters. It has been a great way to get staff across the charity engaged in sharing stories about our work and thinking about the importance our supporters. We can even demonstrate the impact: we couldn’t thank 100% of our supporters in a single day so we kept a control group separate and tracked results; six months on, there was an uplift in value from the group of donors who received these personal thank yous, an effect that increased after after a year. One supporter sent back a thank you letter thanking the member of staff for her hand-written thank you, and one of our corporate partners framed their thank you and hung it in their lobby. Feedback from our staff was also overwhelmingly positive. Win-win all around.
Great idea! Will have to A/B test this.
Brilliant, Meredith!
We’ve been recommending that to our Basics & More students and subscribers as well. Here’s a wonderful example from Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation: http://www.pamelagrow.com/5224/turning-givingtuesday-upside-mr-hollands-opus-foundation/
Meredith! I LOVE that idea! Last staff position, I’d been handwriting notes to every donor myself.
But getting the entire organization involved? That’s genius. Pure genius. Everyone is a fundraiser – whether they ever ask for a gift or not.
Glad you liked my suggestion Tom! I’ve got a couple of articles over on Clairification from last year — if anyone is interested.http://www.clairification.com/2015/10/13/givingtuesday-or-gratitude-tuesday-choose-how-youll-roll/. Will post another soon, and will probably include your wonderful example Meredith!