For many, GivingTuesday has become a crucial campaign in their drive to achieve an annual fundraising goal to fund their mission.
Others have taken advice like Roger Craver’s and other’s, opting to explore creative ways to bypass the norm, either in favor of ignoring it altogether or using it in a totally different way (ThankingThursday, for example).
Either way, we’re in the throes of the peak planning period for this upcoming communication frenzy, and it’s critical to have a strategy going in.
Why?
A Dull Sameness
The sheer and ever increasing volume of emails and their eerily similar subject lines on GivingTuesday make it a necessity to be different or risk blending into oblivion. Worse yet, not being unique may lead you to literally upset a portion of your current or potential loyal donors.
Many of your donors will, like I do, receive multiple emails from every charity they support. This can fill an inbox very quickly, since retailers and other businesses are also sending numerous emails during November and December.
To be honest, there are very few of those emails that stand out from this massive influx invading my inbox!
Our own analysis of GivingTuesday email appeals shows that exact dull sameness as pervasive.
One has to wonder if those fundraisers sending the multiple emails out during the day and evening of Giving Tuesday are very active donors themselves? If that was the case, surely they could compare their email subject lines and formats and content to the numerous others they have received.
Refreshingly Different
As my friend Roger illustrated with his Concordia example in the link above, being different is quite refreshing and stimulating to your email recipients.
This is the key point of this post: just by being different from the rest your charity and its cause will truly stand out!
I urge you to review the collection of examples and advice we have gathered on GivingTuesday.
Using those as a starting point, assemble your team (even if it is just yourself) to begin crafting your communication strategy for the upcoming and all future GivingTuesdays.
The effort will be deeply appreciated by your constituency and the fundraising results for November and December should be best ever!
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