Two Weeks Notice: Your Giving Tuesday Guide
With the holidays fast approaching, it’s easy to get swept up in planning trips, PTO requests, and finishing up projects. Don’t forget that after you’re stuffed full of Turkey and shopped your heart out, there’s a time-honored tradition of giving back on Giving Tuesday.
What is Giving Tuesday?
For those who haven’t heard of it before, Giving Tuesday is a global movement celebrated on the Tuesday following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It kicks off the end-of-year giving season and is a great time to remind and encourage your employees to give back!
AHHH! We’re Two Weeks Out….And I Forgot
Don’t worry! We’ve got your back. A Giving Tuesday campaign doesn’t have to be complicated for your CSR team to implement and execute. We’re outlining a few tried and true methods to help you activate your employee groups and kickstart end-of-year giving!
Lean on Technology
CSR technology platforms can be your best friend, work with your account manager to create a splash page or engagement element that will prompt employees to give back on Giving Tuesday. Best practices for this page are: set the page to launch the moment Giving Tuesday begins, you don’t want to waste a second of this day! It’s a great idea to encourage all giving, anywhere. But, it’s also great to have a few suggested organizations in case your employees get stuck. These might be your preferred nonprofit partners or organizations your company recently volunteered with.
Create a Messaging Strategy
Clear messaging is key so that your employees know what to expect. Send a message before Giving Tuesday that explains what it is, and how employees can give. That way they know what to expect and don’t forget to do a reminder email the day-of as well. Many employees might take an extended vacation, or they’ll be busy catching-up and may forget to give.
Make it Public
Find a way to share your team’s success, whether that is frequent updates on your All-Company Slack channel, or a physical reminder in-office like a thermometer, or something a little more creative. Having physical reminders lets employees make donations throughout the day, as time allows and the continual updates will keep Giving Tuesday top-of-mind.
Share Your Progress
Sharing externally can help encourage employee giving. Link up with your marketing department to do a social media takeover! Use the day to share updates about how many of your employees are participating in Giving Tuesday, their charities of choice, and any stories your team is willing to share. If you have a large company, it can be a great tool to connect various offices together to share employee experiences. Social media can also help spread the good work that your team is doing out beyond your office locations.
Have an Exit Plan
This is the opposite of a get-out-quick exit plan! This is a plan to keep the giving going all season long. As employees are actively giving back on Giving Tuesday begin thinking about how you can offer more opportunities where you can encourage giving and volunteering well into 2019. The important thing to remember is that this does NOT mean a series of “big asks”. Too many big asks and your team will start to become less engaged, but, a series of asks under $10 might be doable for them over the next couple of months. Of course, we all know that $10 here and $5 there can add up pretty quickly to some high impact, and highly engaged employees!
Bring it All Together
Giving Tuesday doesn’t have to be overly-complicated or time-consuming. It is simply a reminder to your employees to give back in any way that they wish to. With a little help from technology and a few solid messages to the team, you can jump-start your end-of-year giving campaign in just a couple of hours!