I also had several local organizations join the Branches 60 Day Coaching Program for nonprofit leaders to help them maximize the giving day opportunity.

It was pretty incredible to see the leaders I was coaching with their huge smiles that big day (April 4th)! Especially the two clients who were #1 & #2 on the leaderboard for most of the day.

The nonprofit that was #1 on the leaderboard most of the day was my client, Ability Tree.

Ability Tree is a faith-based nonprofit that comes alongside individuals and families impacted by disability through recreation, education, support and training.

Ability Tree has two staff beyond the two co-founders and annual revenue of less than $1 million.

In the very first conversation I had with Joe Butler, the Founder and leader of Ability Tree, I was immediately impressed. Joe had a big vision, aggressive goals, and wasn’t afraid to take risks and do the hard stuff.

Sixty days later, Joe and I were celebrating their $91K campaign as friends.

Those 60 days of our coaching program were a sprint with dozens of key moments.

But, I’ve outlined here the 10 critical elements that I believe led to the huge success of this giving day campaign.

6) Email Marketing Strategy & Calendar

If you asked Joe, he’d probably say that the email marketing plan and strategy we crafted was one of the most impactful elements of the campaign.

Ability Tree had an email list and sent emails from time to time, but like most nonprofits, they weren’t sure how to fully leverage it.

Most often, nonprofits with a list make one of two mistakes:

1) They don’t send enough email.
2) The emails they send aren’t engaging.

For those nonprofits have an effective strategy, email marketing continues to be the strategy with the highest ROI.

There is a lot to be said about effective email marketing, but for now I’ll leave you with these key principles:

• Make your emails personal, even if they are going to large lists. 
• Make your emails audience-centric. What do they care about?
• You need to send multiple emails with the same message, written in fresh ways.
• Segment whenever possible.
• Create an email schedule and stick to it consistently.

For Joe, we planned out at least one emails for the 6 weeks leading up to the Giving Day and then a few extra for the week of the giving day.

The most effective emails we sent were actually the simplest. In fact, this super-simple, super effective email is one of my “secret weapons” I regularly recommend to my nonprofit clients.

If you want the step-by-step guide to sending the same kind of email, you can download that by clicking here.

Check out the texts Joe sent me the day he sent that email…

You gotta love texts like these…

this super-simple email strategy really works.

As a coach, I love seeing texts like:

• “It’s working!”
  
• “I’ve never had this much success from an email!”
  
• and “good-sized gifts” 

7) An Evolving Call to Action

A giving day provides a unique challenge for crafting your call to action.

You can’t wait until the big day to start sharing about your campaign, obviously. But, what are you asking people to do during the weeks leading up to the giving day?

For Ability Tree, we had three phases for the call to action (CTA). 

Phase 1 was all about building awareness. Because most of the audience and donors were not sure what NWA Gives was all about, some education was required. The CTAs during the first phase of the campaign were simply about getting people engaged.

They sounded like, “Let’s grab coffee”. “Watch this video”. “Check out this Facebook Post.”

Phase 2 was critical. During the 2-3 weeks leading up to the giving day, we asked A-Team members, email recipients, and social media followers to “Sign Up for a Text Reminder to Give”. Joe created a simple form for people to sign up and if they told him in person they were interested, he could pull out his phone and sign them up on the spot.

A generic “mark this day on your calendar” is much less actionable and less likely to happen. Instead, this CTA (sign up for a text reminder) allowed people to commit to give well before the giving day. Joe had nearly 100 people on his text list once the big day arrived.

Phase 3 is obvious. On the giving day, we asked people to give now. There was some communication around key hours to give for potential prize money. But, we didn’t want to complicate things or make the donors jump through hoops.

Joe spent most of the day sending reminders with this call to action: 4 emails on the giving day. Several social media posts.

And hundreds of texts… SOOO many texts, we called it a text-a-thon. (see #9 below)

More than anything, social media helps connect people with your story, keep you top of mind, and serve as a reminder when the big day arrives.

It’s important to get creative on social media to earn people’s attention and engagement.

So, take some time and brainstorm with your team about fun, unique, and unexpected ways to share. Ask yourself: “what does my audience care about?” and communicate in an audience-centric way. This is the first step toward getting their attention.

Here are a few creative ideas from the Ability Tree campaign:

• Live video (Joe went live nearly every hour on the giving day)
• Raw video from around the office
• Professional, edited video and stories
• Polished, custom graphics with giving day info
• Photos, videos and stories of people impacted by your mission, in this case families who were raving fans of Ability Tree
• Quotes and videos from board members
• Funny videos with local influencers
• Personal notes from the founders, staff ,and board
• Renderings of the new building
• Quotes from families and students
• Polls and questions
• Thank you messages to donors and advocates
• Event invitations
• Live Q&A

^ A few snapshots from the Ability Facebook Campaign – all Posted on the actual giving day (April 4th)

Ability Tree posted 4 times on the day before the giving day and 21 times on the actual giving day.

And, it wasn’t too much. It was exciting and engaging, building anticipation for their audience as Joe gave live updates on the progress throughout the day.

ALSO, plan to spend at least a small amount on social media ads.

Facebook is one of the most powerful and effective advertising platforms, in history.

Facebook is also one of the easiest ways to waste advertising budget, in history.

Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of both.

These days, you basically have to “pay to play” with Facebook. If you don’t spend at least a little on ads or “boosting posts”, Facebook just won’t show your content to very many people.

In my career I’ve spent over $200,000 in Facebook and Instagram Ads and am still learning every day. Facebook makes it really easy to spend money, but without a proper understanding of your audience segments and targeting techniques, you should be careful.

Without an expert on your team or a coach to help, I’d recommend keeping your ad budget pretty low. Maybe $100 to $1,000.  If you do have an expert helping out, you might be able to achieve a good ROI on your spend and scale your investment and your results.

With Ability Tree, Joe boosted a few video posts and spent a few hundred dollars to help build awareness of their campaign.

9) Plan a Text-a-Thon with Your Team

Joe did such a great job recruiting people who wanted reminders on the day of giving, that he needed help actually sending all

those texts.

This list of nearly 100 potential donors was too important to ignore. They had essentially all made a soft commitment to give on the giving day, and had given Joe permission to text them a reminder.

So, on the big day he had a small team (himself and 2-3 others) going through the list and sending short text reminders to people who asked for one.

Often you’ll have board members, staff and volunteers who want to do more than just give, and a text-a-thon is a perfect way to get them involved. And if they are comfortable with it, they can text close friends and family members who haven’t signed up for the reminder, and attract even more support.

Average email open rates are around 25%, but text messages are opened 85% to 95% of the time! (depending on if it’s a marketing message).

So, a text message reminder is a great opportunity to make sure your key donors don’t get too busy and totally forget to participate on your big day.

10) Plan Ahead for Great Follow Up and a Thank You Campaign

What happens AFTER your giving day may be the most important (and most often neglected) part of your entire campaign.

You will be incredibly busy planning for the big day and it may be difficult to look beyond it. But, you can’t make the giving day your ‘finish line’ or you’ll run out of gas before the final leg.

Instead, take some time a few weeks before the giving day to start brainstorming and planning creative ways to follow up and say thank you.

Let’s unpack both of these a little more and look at what Ability Tree did.

Since they didn’t quite hit their goal of $100,000 on the day of giving, they continued to leave the campaign open and share the link in the next couple of email campaigns and social media messages.

The language shifted to “Wow! Look what God did!” and “THANK YOU!”… but, a secondary message was “If you missed out on the giving day, it’s not too late to help us finish our goal”.

In the few days following the giving day, Ability Tree raised over $12,000 more in giving!

If they would have shut the campaign down and stopped sending the links out, they would have missed out on over 13% of the total giving.

No matter how many emails, texts and Facebook posts you send out, someone will miss it or forget to give. A couple subtle reminders, over the next few days, is a great way to round out your campaign.

Last, but not least, your “thank you” campaign is SO. INCREDIBLY. IMPORTANT.

I put that in all caps, because way too many nonprofits are bad about moving on after a campaign without effectively expressing their gratitude and the impact of the giving.

The average donor retention rate across US nonprofits was 45.5% in 2017, according to Giving USA. We can do better than that!

I recommend making a 1-2 touch-points in the 48 hours after your giving day. And another 2-3 touch points in the following 3 months.

Your goals with these touch-points are:

• Make your donor feel noticed (on an individual level).
• Express sincere gratitude for their generosity.
• Demonstrate impact and transformation from their giving.
• Connect them in with your ‘tribe’ or community of others who care about your cause.

Here are a few ideas for your thank you campaign:

• Go Live on Facebook or Instagram to celebrate the total giving, say thank you, and reinforce the impact that will result.
• Make a super short (30-60 second ) thank you video that you text or email out to your A-Team who participated and any other major donors or advocates.
• Schedule coffee and lunch meetings with any significant new donors. Bring a gift and ask them why they gave.
• Send an email the day after the giving day with an update and thank you message and reminding the audience of the impact of their giving.
• Update your website messaging with a “thank you” banner, total giving figure, and a photo representing the impact that will follow.
• Send hand-written thank you notes and ask your board to help.
• Make personal phone calls to say thanks or leave voicemails and ask your board to help.
• Send out an email two to three weeks later showing progress (i.e. “Look what is already happening because of your giving!”)
• Send out at least quarterly emails for the next 12 months to those who gave to that campaign, with updates and saying thanks again.
• Throw a celebration party.
• Host a new donor conference call, and use it as a focus group.
• Do a ‘surprise’ presentation at a corporate partner’s office with a plaque and balloons and live stream it on Facebook or Instagram. (Probably let at least one person there know that you are coming…)
• Record a video on your phone of a family or individual impacted by your organization, saying ‘thank you’ and send that out individually to your A-Team (one by one) and post on social media (with permission).

Each and every one of these touchpoints is making it much more likely for these donors to give again and give at greater levels. Remember, a $1,000 donation on your giving day may be a “trial” gift. They may have the capacity to give $10,000 or $100,000 during your next campaign.

But, that larger second gift is only happening if you make them feel like the first gift was impactful, noticed, and truly appreciated.

The Ability Tree thank you campaign consisted of several of these touch-points and is still underway!

Ok, there you have it.

Our team at Branches is currently building an online course based on our comprehensive marketing framework, designed specifically for nonprofits and ministries. In the course we go much deeper into several of these strategies, including email marketing and social media strategy.

Course participants will get access to step-by-step instructions, video guides, email templates, case studies, worksheets, ‘office hours’ where they can ask me questions directly and a private Facebook Group for all nonprofits taking the course.

Participants will walk away with a rock-solid marketing plan and feeling confident.

Even better, the course is guaranteed. If you follow the advice and aren’t happy with your results, we’ll give you a 100% refund.

And… because the course isn’t ready quite yet, we’re offering a pre-sale discount for anyone who purchases it by July 15th.

To be one of the first to find out when the course opens up, join our good-makers email list.

Oh and here are those free resources again, to help you with your next fundraising campaign:

• A-Team Worksheet – Define & Organize Your Most Important Players
• The “Secret Weapon” Email Template & Step by Step Guide