EP 42: Giving Tuesday -- How to Make It Work for Your Organization

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Intro: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff Porter: Okay, welcome back to the Elevate Your Event Podcast, where we talk about all the various ways you can make your next fundraising event or, in this case, giving campaign better. We've got a special audience today. We have pulled Stephanie Mason from the technical booth onto the podcast floor to share all of her wisdom on Giving Tuesday.

Stephanie Mason: What can I say? I'm a sucker for Giving Tuesday. I'm definitely a sucker for Handbid.

Jeff Porter: She's totally in her comfort zone right now. We love to have her on. And then we've also been joined by Elise Druckenmiller, Handbid's client service guru. And Jeff Porter, CEO of Handbid. We are here to talk about Giving Tuesday -- by request from some of our viewers or listeners, depending on whether you're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever.

Jeff Porter: Giving Tuesday, which we were actually joking about -- it is actually Tuesday, November 28th this year. So we're going to talk about what in the heck it is. The first thing we also need to figure out is why it's the Tuesday after Cyber Monday and Black Friday. But I'm a dude, so I don't leave the house on Friday. I watch football and buy everything online on Monday. That's just kind of how I think a lot of guys are wired, whereas my wife is the one walking out the door at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving to go shop all night.

Stephanie Mason: That's right.

Jeff Porter: I would have to go through therapy if I did that. Okay, but we're here to talk about Giving Tuesday. Stephanie, give us a little bit of a definition, background on it. How did it go last year?

Stephanie Mason: All right. Fun facts about Giving Tuesday. It was created in 2012. And it's not just a U.S. thing, which I actually didn't know. It's a global movement for giving. If you go to their website, there's a whole map. They're in about 90 countries.

Jeff Porter: Elise is here to hold Stephanie accountable for accuracy, which is good. Which is my day-to-day relationship with Elise.

Stephanie Mason: So, I mean, do people actually give? Is it really a thing? It sounds like it. Last year in the U.S., 35 million adults participated, which was up 6% from the previous year. And they gave $3.1 billion.

Jeff Porter: But it doesn't always have to just be money. I think the whole purpose of Giving Tuesday is to promote generosity in the United States and around the world. It can be donating your time. It could be donating cash. It could be donating physical goods. So think about all those different ways you can participate.

Jeff Porter: As an organization, you might be thinking, do we participate in this or not? Any time you can use some sort of national movement as an opportunity to communicate with donors, it's worth doing. It's like Thanksgiving -- that's why this is a little strange. As a charity, we would always send out a thank-you around Thanksgiving. "We're grateful for you." And then five days later, we're going to do the same thing and ask for more money.

Jeff Porter: We're going to talk about that, but anytime you have the opportunity to thank your veterans, thank the country you live in, thank your donors, thank the constituents that you support as a charity -- all of those things. We should always remind people that we're grateful for the things they do for our organizations.

Elise Druckenmiller: Absolutely. We just did one on volunteers. Thank your volunteers too.

Jeff Porter: But in terms of Giving Tuesday, you have this opportunity to participate. They've got the logo. You can throw that out on your social media. And now the question is, am I going out and asking for money? In a lot of cases that could be true. But I don't want everybody listening to think that's what you have to do. Maybe you just ran your gala last week. It's going to be weird to then two weeks later say, "Hey, it's Giving Tuesday. You just gave me $10,000 two weeks ago. Will you give me more money?"

Jeff Porter: You can think about ways to use Giving Tuesday as just another excuse to do whatever. If you haven't run a fundraiser or done an ask in a while, it's a great opportunity to do one. Or if you don't have a year-end ask, this could be the catalyst.

Elise Druckenmiller: The other thing I really love about Giving Tuesday is bringing your organization beyond just your normal donors who are already participating. I like Giving Tuesday because of the momentum that's been built with it. The hashtag Giving Tuesday -- I see it everywhere around this time of year. It increases the visibility of your organization and what you do to people who maybe have not heard of you before.

Elise Druckenmiller: It can also expand your donor base. There are a lot of people that sometimes feel like, well, I don't want to go to the gala, I like this organization, but I can't give $5,000. But I could give a few hundred dollars or $100. Giving Tuesday makes it accessible for people to do that.

Jeff Porter: I think that makes sense. It's not an easy formula because you've got to factor in what kind of touch points you've had throughout the year, how recent those touch points have been, whether you feel like you're in a position to do this, and whether you're planning on participating in your state giving day -- which here in Colorado is the week after. So you've got to factor all those things in to determine what you really want to do on Giving Tuesday.

Jeff Porter: Or maybe you turn Giving Tuesday into something else. Say you're a Colorado charity and you want to use Giving Tuesday as the opening conversation around your Colorado Gives Day campaign on December 5th. That's another idea. Or maybe you just say, we're not going to do anything on Giving Tuesday -- we're just going to give back as an organization. We're going to do something amazing for our constituents, or for our volunteers, or our donors. Maybe you're buying coffee gift cards for your major donors and giving them out saying, "You've given to us, we're going to give back to you."

Elise Druckenmiller: I like that idea. I volunteer a lot, so I really like that idea.

Jeff Porter: Thank goodness you don't volunteer for me because I don't have a gift card to give you.

Jeff Porter: But let's talk about campaigns. In most cases, this isn't going to be a fundraising event. I know this is the Elevate Your Event Podcast, but we also talk about other ways to raise money. And one of those could be some sort of campaign. Let's talk about the different types of campaigns that are available that a lot of charities do, or some that we run on the Handbid platform that could apply here.

Jeff Porter: A couple of ways you could raise money. You can do a peer-to-peer fundraiser. We'll talk about what that is in a second. You could do a text-to-give campaign. This one is not my favorite, but organizations still do the pledge drive -- where they just pledge to give X by the end of the year. I don't love that, but some organizations do it.

Jeff Porter: What else? Just setting up a general donation -- an email campaign. And maybe a direct mail campaign. I don't love those either.

Stephanie Mason: That was on the list, but I was avoiding it.

Jeff Porter: There are still lots of charities that do them and say they work well. Maybe they do with a certain demographic. But all of those are ways of reaching out and expecting some form of a response.

Jeff Porter: Peer-to-peer might be a little different. So just to go through this. An online donation campaign -- maybe on your website, maybe you have a CRM that has a donation page and you want to drive to that. You can do that through an email campaign, a text campaign if you have that capability, or a direct mail campaign. I'm biting my tongue on that one because if you're going to do direct mail, get on it -- it's coming up fast.

Jeff Porter: Those are all different ways to solicit donations. In any of those cases, Giving Tuesday is the catalyst for the conversation, but it shouldn't be the message. The message is who you are and what you do. So it shouldn't be, "Hey, it's Giving Tuesday. Donate to our cause." It's more like, "As we contemplate on the generosity of Americans and specifically you on Giving Tuesday, we respectfully ask..." -- I'm not going to write it for you, but you know what I'm talking about. Tie it back to your mission and your cause, where the money's going to go, what's at stake if you don't get it. None of that really changes. We're just using a day as an excuse.

Jeff Porter: Peer-to-peer is a little different. Here we're talking about individuals not just sending you money -- they're actually creating pages and raising money on your behalf. Those are more involved. Sometimes Giving Tuesday isn't the perfect day to do those. Maybe it is. Maybe you use Giving Tuesday as a way of recruiting fundraisers. They go sign up, create a page, and then go out and solicit donations. That could work with a state giving day where you say, "On Giving Tuesday, we want to tap into your generosity by creating a fundraising page, and then a week later pushing it out to all of your friends and family to donate to a cause you care about."

Stephanie Mason: What I like about peer-to-peer fundraisers combined with Giving Tuesday, if that's your launch day, is that Giving Tuesday -- having been created in 2012 -- the younger generations are very familiar with it. I like that because then you can really get the youth and families involved. Creating a peer-to-peer can be fun for your family, get your kids involved, and they're telling their friends. It makes it fun.

Jeff Porter: I think so. I agree. Another side to that -- similar, but maybe as a company, not a nonprofit. As a company, you can say, for this holiday season, we're going to participate in Giving Tuesday. Collectively, we're going to select a charity and each department competes to see who can raise the most. Then collectively, the company donates a certain amount to an organization of its choice.

Elise Druckenmiller: Or maybe you volunteer in a soup kitchen. Anything, yeah.

Jeff Porter: I think it is a good way to get other people thinking about the spirit of giving and generosity. I think there's not enough of that in the world. Any organization can be bold about this. Most of our listeners are organizations, charities, or event planners. Maybe in your role as a development director or event planner, you come up with five ways that people could use Giving Tuesday to support your organization. Then start handing those out to local businesses.

Jeff Porter: It doesn't always have to be, "You could just donate cash." Maybe that's one of five ways. Maybe another one is volunteering at your organization because you have a need. Maybe it's posting something on social media about you. It doesn't always have to be "I just want a check from you." The goal, obviously in a lot of cases, is to raise money, but it might also be to attract new donors. Increase visibility.

Elise Druckenmiller: Increase visibility.

Jeff Porter: Leverage that. "Post on our behalf. Here's the post, make it your own, send it out, here's the graphic." Like, "This charity is important to me and here's why." Or "XYZ Company of Colorado supports Project Angel Heart because of what they do. We just want to promote them and support them." That's a way of giving back because they get visibility through your social media channel.

Jeff Porter: All of those things could work. So let's talk about text to give, because that means a lot of different things. This might be a good opportunity to educate our listeners on what text to give really is and what it's not.

Jeff Porter: Text to give in the historical case was the "text $10 to Red Cross" -- text "Red Cross" to this number and we will donate $10 on your behalf. That's it. Those still exist, especially with natural disasters. Those campaigns go through something called the Mobile Giving Foundation in most cases.

Jeff Porter: What most people are doing these days with text to give is different. With the Mobile Giving Foundation, you're giving through a connection with Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile -- the cellular carriers. When you text that number, it's going on to your phone bill. A couple things have to be in place. Your account has to have premium billing enabled. This goes back to the days of buying ringtones. This $10 charge is going to show up on your bill.

Jeff Porter: To do that, you have to have premium billing enabled, and in a lot of accounts these days, it's not. When we were talking to them, and this was a few years back, less than 50% of phones had it enabled. So you've cut your available phone population in half. The other thing is it can take anywhere from three to five months to get your money.

Jeff Porter: And these campaigns can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to get going. If you're the American Red Cross and you're raising $20 million, that's not a big deal. Most of our listeners are not.

Jeff Porter: So that is not how text to give typically works for most organizations. What's going to happen is you'll work with a mobile bidding or online donation company -- Handbid is one of those. They're going to have what's called a short code, typically six digits. They'll allow you to have some sort of keyword response. So it'll be like "text PROJECT or HEART or GIVE2024 to 99192" -- which is our short code -- and it's going to respond back with a URL, a web link. People tap on that and it opens a web page where they fill it out.

Jeff Porter: You're probably thinking that seems complicated. It's not complicated, but it is more work than just texting a number and having $10 show up on your phone bill. Why do you have to fill out a form? First, we have to know who they are. And web pages, especially ones asking for credit card information, have to be secure. They need to log in. So they're going to put in their name, email address, sometimes phone number, sometimes address. They're going to pick a donation level, type in a credit card, submit it, and the system sends them back an email receipt.

Jeff Porter: It's like donating on your website. Really no different. But you just have to understand that most systems work that way because that's the best way for them to work. There isn't anything out of the box that's going to do what the Mobile Giving Foundation does at a low price and give you your money right away.

Jeff Porter: In Handbid, we call it keyword response because you can customize what that response is. You could send them to a registration URL, a ticketing URL, a donation URL, wherever you want. You have some flexibility and can even change that on the fly. Either way, they're going to a web page, or in our case, they could go right into our app. But it's not going to show up on their phone bill.

Jeff Porter: And that's actually a favor to you as a charity. You'll get your money in a more reasonable time. You also don't have as many chargebacks. When $20 shows up on your phone bill six months later, most people are going to say, "I don't remember that. Take it off." And you don't get that money.

Stephanie Mason: God bless you for reading your phone bill.

Jeff Porter: Right? But if someone gave three or four hundred dollars, now they've got a $700 phone bill. So anyway, that was text to give.

Jeff Porter: There are other interactive ways to do this. We have a puzzle thing -- anything where you're creating some sort of interactive campaign. The puzzle thing was built because we felt it was more interactive than thermometers. We love thermometers, but they're a bit standard at this point. Everybody has one. The puzzle is a different way of fundraising where you can show a before and after tied to a project. Here's the before situation. If you buy all these puzzle pieces, as you buy them, it's going to reveal the after. So it's the dirt field and the built playground. Or the dirty water and the clean water. Those are other ideas that might work well, like for a capital campaign type situation.

Jeff Porter: To recap, we walked through a lot of things. First, figure out where Giving Tuesday fits in your fundraising plan. Look at when you run your events, when you do your asks, how recent your last ask was. Don't feel like Giving Tuesday means you have to go out and ask for money. It could be time for you to give back.

Elise Druckenmiller: I love that idea.

Jeff Porter: What are we doing on Giving Tuesday? How are you giving back to us?

Stephanie Mason: Starbucks gift cards, we thought.

Jeff Porter: This is her "Handbid gives back to its employees" -- not the community, to its employees, apparently.

Stephanie Mason: I think the audience would agree. We deserve a little something.

Jeff Porter: Handbid will be sending out a notice that we'll be hiring on Giving Tuesday.

Jeff Porter: No, you guys, this has been fun. It's a question we get asked about a lot, and everybody's like, what do I do on Giving Tuesday? Come up with a plan, and depending on when you listen to this podcast, it would either be coming up soon or in the past. But either way, when you're doing your annual fundraising plan, figure out where it factors in. If your state has a giving day, figure out where that factors in. Because that's all free media and free press. But if you're running your gala the week before Thanksgiving, we get it. We're not saying move your gala to the spring. We're just saying figure out where all this fits in together.

Jeff Porter: Any other words of wisdom?

Stephanie Mason: No, I think we got it all.

Jeff Porter: Stephanie, she's a checker. She's going to go down the list and make sure everything's checked off.

Stephanie Mason: We did. We are.

Jeff Porter: Spot checked. Okay. Well, thank you guys. We appreciate every single one of you. We wish you the best of luck on your next Giving Tuesday, your state giving day, or any other time that you might be running a fundraiser or doing an ask. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. Until then, happy fundraising.