Four takeaways from Deed’s panel “GivingTuesday Turns 10: The Making of a Winning Campaign”
INTRODUCTION
To celebrate GivingTuesday’s 10th anniversary, Deed welcomed our community to our New York HQ last month for a special expert panel "GivingTuesday Turns 10: The Making of a Winning Campaign."
Along with our friends from Ripple, Pega, and the Brooklyn Book Bodega, we explored how to rally employees around GivingTuesday, what kinds of partnerships make sense for nonprofits, and how to measure and sustain our collective impact well beyond November 29.
Here are four key insights from the panel that can help you craft and/or refine a winning GIvingTuesday campaign this year.
FOUR PREDICTIONS FOR GIVINGTUESDAY 2023
1. A huge percentage of companies’ total giving for the year will be made in just one day.
“GivingTuesday made up about 20 percent of our employee giving and corporate matches in support of over one hundred nonprofits,” said Jonathan Perri from cryptocurrency company Ripple.
In 2021, 35 million employees and their organizations gave over $2.7 billion to charitable causes on GivingTuesday—the highest amount in the movement’s history.
2. There will be a greater push to use technology and flexibility to meet remote and international employees where they’re at.
“Some employees prefer giving, others prefer volunteering. Making sure people have options so they can participate however they choose to,” Lindsey Clark Smith of the low-code AI platform Pega said.
Sixty-three percent of employees want more opportunities for purpose in their day-to-day work, and the only way to meet that need is with inclusive technology and flexible programming. It’s just as important to give our people a wide variety of options for what countries they can give in/from and what organizations they can support as it is to make sure that they feel encouraged to share their passions in the workplace.
“Last year we saw really high engagement but lower per-donor dollar amounts than some of the big guys out there,” said Rebecca Cohen, founder and executive director of the Brooklyn Book bodega.
Employee engagement is one of the most important metrics for any company, but we should remember to do all we can to make sure that our level of support is helping our nonprofit partners meet their goals.
“We want to make it easier for folks, so this year we want to do what we did last year but do it better,” with the hope that greater engagement will lead to greater giving, she said.
4. The excitement, momentum, and impact will continue long after Tuesday—especially if we can capture and use the data on our impact.
“The need doesn’t stop in December,” Clark from Pega said. “We really try to give our employees opportunities to give back throughout the year…and our donation match program is available year-round.”
One theme reiterated by all the panelists is that the metrics on GivingTuesday’s impact can motivate people to give, volunteer, and share their skills with deserving nonprofits year-round. Without clean, useful data, it can be difficult to share a true and compelling story of your organization’s social and environmental impact, and to ensure your initiatives’ long-term success.
It’s important to “fill the donors in on the impact of those dollars to keep them engaged,” said Brooklyn Book Bodega founder Cohen.
THE MAKING OF A WINNING GIVINGTUESDAY CAMPAIGN
Lindsey Clark Smith also mentioned that Pega is using the phrase “giving forward” rather than “giving back.” That’s because “Giving forward implies you are giving because this is what you want the world to look like,” she said. We think that’s exactly the right mindset, especially this year when the breadth and depth of the need around the world has been made abundantly clear.
Right now, while there’s still time, we would encourage social/environmental impact leads to think about how to plan, track, manage, and measure their campaigns to make sure they’re setting themselves and their partner nonprofits up to succeed on November 29 and far into the future.
Deed is a platform designed to engage all of your employees—no matter where or how they work—by giving them ample opportunities to do good deeds with their colleagues and meaningfully support the social and environmental causes they care about. We’re helping our partners like Ripple, Pega, and Brooklyn Book Bodega to make the most of GivingTuesday. Book a free demo today to learn how we can help you rally your employees on November 29 and beyond.
