Giving Tuesday is now ingrained into the holiday season, and it’s more popular than ever. The Giving Tuesday Data Commons estimates that “giving in the United States alone totaled $3.1 billion representing a 15% increase compared to Giving Tuesday 2021, and a 25% increase since 2020.” Did your organization take full advantage of the opportunity this day of giving provides?
Now, as we pivot to the Christmas and Year End fundraising season, the Masterworks team wants to take a moment to reflect on three takeaways we learned from Giving Tuesday 2022 — all of which you can use to better your fundraising efforts through the end of the year.
- Send that email
Email is still the best way to remind your donors to give. Data Axle ran a survey to find out who knows about Giving Tuesday and how we can understand their donating habits and behaviors. They found that “Email is still the desired channel, with 40% of people selecting it as their desired channel across all generations.” Do you believe your emails target your donors at key times in this season?
Are you holding back with the fear that you are sending too much? Keep those emails coming!
- Start with ad creative that already works
Creative specifically crafted with Giving Tuesday imagery was not the key to successful fundraising during this season. Since the ramp-up window was so small from Thanksgiving to Giving Tuesday, we found it more effective to enhance promotion behind already-performing ads as opposed to building a brand-new campaign. We created ads for our clients that could be utilized throughout the giving season. We believe in iterating off of top-performing ads versus starting over from scratch each season.
Are there high-performing ads you already have in market that can be used this year end?
- Focus ad spend on the day of Giving Tuesday, not the days leading up to it
Our buyers found that the days between Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday saw a higher CPG (Cost Per Gift) with fewer gifts coming in but that spend stayed similar. We encourage our clients to be ready to pivot and be nimble with ads that are working. The Christmas and Year-End holidays are different beasts and will require a different level of spend leading up to and around the holidays themselves. Are you setting and forgetting about your digital spend? Or are you watching, learning, and pivoting based on the success you are seeing each day during the holiday season?
This is one of the reasons we love the work we do at Masterworks: every day and every year, we wake up and get to learn new things about the organizations we work with, about the platforms we use, and about how to increase the donations being funneled into amazing Kingdom-building work.
We learned a lot this Giving Tuesday and will continue to learn this fundraising season. What did you learn this Giving Tuesday? If you have an idea you’re wrestling with this year end and want to bounce an idea off of us, we’re here to chat anytime! You can contact us here.
Bless you this busy fundraising season!