When the chaos that is Black Friday is over, and things are getting back to normal (or, normal for the holiday shopping season), it is time for an important day in your not-for-profit calendar: Giving Tuesday.

Set up as a reaction to the quite often literally rampant consumerism on Black Friday, Giving Tuesday is a day for individuals and businesses to give to charities. Unsurprisingly for a movement that prizes civility and public-spirited giving over macing your neighbours to get at a 70%-off waffle iron, the idea is big in Canada (you can read more about it here.) This year Giving Tuesday will be held on November 28th.

How can your non-profit use this time to encourage people to give back to the community, country and world?

Start Early (And Set Goals)

At the risk of repeating advice from our Black Friday blog post, starting the preparations for Giving Tuesday early is important. Giving yourself a few weeks or even months to plan, prepare and spread the word will reap dividends.

Shout It Out

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are guaranteed to be trending topics on any social platform you care to name for their respective days, so a good thing to do in the days and weeks preceding Giving Tuesday is get on your social platform and talk about it. People are more likely to engage with a not-for-profit with their wallets if the charity engages with their lives- give them the idea that they can (and probably should) give back on #GivingTuesday and they’ll associate you with a good thing in their life, and reward you accordingly.

Engage Locally

Your local community is a great source of exposure and networking, so make it a priority to promote there first. From a purely marketing standpoint, a ten-thousand-dollar donation to the Red Cross doesn’t have as much of an impact on local people as a fun run at a local park (which is not to say that you shouldn’t do it.) Try to find local events you can partner with on Giving Tuesday, and if you can’t find them, make them: wash cars, organize a #giveback day, partner with other local businesses. You don’t need to shout about it in more than a few blog or social media posts, but it will have an impact, especially if you can multiply that impact by…

Networking

Retailers are going to be in the same boat as you on the Black Friday week- their marketing efforts drowned out by the big stores, the discounts they can offer limited by their ability to buy in bulk. But, by joining together on Giving Tuesday with other smaller, local not-for-profits you can level the playing field. Team up to promote Giving Tuesday across your social media channels, organize a big charity event with local partners, design a poster for #GivingTuesday that can be in every store in town. Your ‘competitors’ are often not really your competitors when compared to Amazon and the like, so by joining together you can massively expand your reach.

Every Little Bit Helps

If you have retail partners then a donation box at the checkout can gather a few dollars for you, but why not expand on that? Businesses want to give back for PR purposes, so reach out and see if any are willing to organize a fundraising day or give a percentage of their profits over a period, and (depending on their POS system) can often add the option for customers to make a donation on top of their purchase. Businesses can also add this option to their online sales with apps like this one.

Make It Fun

Nobody likes feeling guilty about giving, so instead of plastering your building with pictures of starving orphans, come up with a fun name for your particular campaign, hire a dunk tank and make some money by dunking your boss, play music, hire a face painter for the kids.

Integrate It

If you’ve been working on a marketing message for the past year it doesn’t make sense for you to suddenly switch up your message when Giving Tuesday comes around. Keeping your tone and imagery consistent won’t just prevent tonal whiplash when you’re moving from one tone to another, it will enforce the idea that charitable giving is an intrinsic part of a successful community.

 

Giving Tuesday is getting bigger every year- $177 million was raised in 2016. You can contribute to breaking that record, and we want to see your non-profit succeed on this day!  If you’re ever looking for advice on not-for-profit marketing (or how you can access free advertising dollars as a registered charity) then get in touch with us 🙂