Giving Tuesday: Email & Social Media Campaign
Each year, my organization creates a Giving Tuesday campaign with the goal of raising funds for special education students. This year, I was tasked with taking the campaign further than it had ever gone: raising more money than the prior year and growing the number of donors who contributed.
Process
The project began with a team strategy session to define the approach. Together, we decided how many emails to send leading up to Giving Tuesday and how many to send on the day itself. The goal was clear: communicate frequently and concisely.
From there, the rest was mine to own. I finalized the strategy, built out the communications plan, and executed every piece of it. The campaign was a mix of e-blasts and social media posts, all centered around raising money for our Student and Family Emergency Needs Fund, a fund that supports families in our community facing temporary crises.
The campaign was built around two guiding ideas. The first was donor-centric language, using phrases like "You are making a difference" to put donors at the center of the story. I wanted every person who gave to know that they - not just their money - were the reason students and families in crisis were getting the help they needed. The second was using strong visuals and real-time goal updates across email and social media stories to keep donors engaged and show them exactly how close we were to the finish line.
I sent three emails before Giving Tuesday: one two weeks out, one one week out, and one the day before. On Giving Tuesday itself, I sent four emails throughout the day with live updates on our progress. To keep those updates accurate, I tracked incoming donations in real time, making sure every number I shared reflected exactly where we stood. Social media posts ran alongside the emails to keep the momentum going.
Outcome and Takeaways
The number of donors to the campaign more than doubled, we hit our $5,000 goal, and we raised over $7,000, a 103% increase from the year before. Every dollar raised went directly to the Student and Family Emergency Needs Fund, making a real difference for families in our community.
Consistent, concise, and donor-centric communication is the key to a successful Giving Tuesday campaign. The visuals matter just as much as the words, showing donors in real time how close we were to our goal made them feel like they could be the ones to get us there. Putting people at the center of the story, and connecting them directly to the families they were helping, was everything.
