What is a giving day? FAQs & complete planning guide

In a true celebration of philanthropy, giving days invite donors to come together to support their favorite causes, creating tremendous impact through collective gifts. These fundraisers allow nonprofits to reach brand-new donors (and engage existing supporters) through means like social and peer-to-peer fundraising. Plus, unlike with GivingTuesday, you can host a personalized giving day campaign any time you want.

In this guide, we’ll explore giving days in more detail so your organization can take full advantage of this innovative, fast-paced fundraising event.

What is a giving day?

Giving days are 24-hour fundraising events that bring communities together to raise money and awareness for a specific cause or organization.

These events are often launched by purpose-built nonprofits, community foundations, hospital foundations, or educational institutions. With proven year-over-year fundraising growth, giving days have steadily increased in popularity as a way to drive urgent donations while building community.

How do giving days work for nonprofits?

Successful giving days incorporate fundraising, community engagement, social networks, and awareness to create a highly targeted, multi-channel campaign. Here’s how they typically work:

1. Your organization sets a date and a fundraising goal for the giving day.
2. Using online fundraising software, you set up a campaign microsite with gamified elements like fundraising thermometers, leaderboards, and a countdown clock.
3. You promote the giving day well in advance across channels and plan any events to host in tandem.
4. On the day of, donors have 24 hours to contribute online and help you reach the fundraising goal.

The time-sensitive nature of giving days is key to their success. The time-boxed theme adds urgency, excitement, and a jolt of adrenaline to any campaign. However, giving days also rely heavily on donor networks and social sharing to spread the word. Ideally, your community comes together to motivate individuals to get involved through hashtags, testimonials, team challenges, and more.

Giving days can be run entirely online, or you can host in-person events, contests, and giveaways to give your community more opportunities to connect face-to-face.

How do different organizations use giving days?

For the best results, tailor your giving day to your organization’s purpose. Explore how these four types of organizations implement 24-hour digital events to reach their intended audience and achieve fundraising success.

Nonprofit giving days

The most well-known nonprofit giving day is #GivingTuesday, a global celebration of generosity that encourages people to give back on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving each year. Nonprofits can participate in GivingTuesday or replicate the excitement by hosting their own online giving events.

Since Giving Days can be 100% virtual, nonprofits of any size can tap into this powerful fundraising opportunity.

Community-centered giving days

Foundations, United Ways, and nonprofit networks work together to support their local communities and create lasting impact. These philanthropy leaders often host giving days to provide a modern, secure place for donors of all sizes to support their favorite causes and discover new ones.

Giving days hosted by community leaders enable multiple nonprofits to raise brand awareness, advance equity, end giving plateaus, and run peer-to-peer campaigns at the same time.

Education giving days

Colleges, universities, and K-12 schools can increase student and alumni engagement through giving days. Using a centralized giving day site, schools share campus stories, highlight areas of greatest need, update alumni giving data, and create friendly competition between departments through leaderboards, challenges, and prizes. 

Educational institutions can also rally behind these digital efforts by using social media to spotlight student ambassadors and host challenges like raffles, walkathons, and campus-wide scavenger hunts throughout the day to better activate their school community.

Hospital foundation giving days

Hospital foundations have to balance fundraising with providing high-quality healthcare services to communities in need. By hosting a giving day, hospitals can creatively engage donors, patients, and staff to raise awareness for their life-saving work and ongoing needs. These fundraisers help hospitals improve the ROI of in-person fundraising events, build a sustainable donor base, and engage current and former patients in a more meaningful way.

What tools do you need to run a giving day?

Giving days are true digital campaigns, which means they require fundraising software to help you reach the most donors and maximize gifts. Here’s a quick checklist of the essential tools you need for your next giving day: 

• Giving day software: Specialized giving day tools like Bonterra GiveGab provide everything you need to host successful giving days in a single, centralized solution. These platforms power intuitive giving day sites that serve as the hub for your giving day campaigns.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising tools: Your current donors are some of your most valuable voices. Make it easy for them to spread the word about your organization with P2P software.
• Text-to-give: With text-to-give software, you can create a giving-day-specific keyword that allows donors to make quick donations from their phones. You can also use texts to share campaign updates and thank donors throughout the day.
• Social media integration: Giving days run on social media awareness, so make sure your platform makes social sharing easy. You can even add a live social feed to your online giving page that highlights all social posts that mention your nonprofit or hashtag.
• Gamification: Scoreboards, leaderboards, contests, and fundraising thermometers keep participants engaged throughout your fundraiser. Create excitement and urgency with gamification features to inspire supporters to help you surpass your goals.

When evaluating your options, keep in mind that giving days require a level of flexibility and customization that not every solution can provide. Fortunately, GiveGab makes it easy to personalize every aspect of the giving day donation process, from custom-branded pages to built-in gamification.

Benefits of hosting a giving day

Giving days are about raising as much support as possible in a short amount of time. By sending out an urgent call for donations during these 24 hours, you can generate significant engagement among your community.

In addition to reaching your fundraising goals, hosting a giving day helps your organization:

• Increase brand visibility and exposure as a leader in philanthropy.
• Create a sense of urgency to raise funds quickly.
• Re-engage past supporters in a fun, modern way.
• Attract new donors to steward in future fundraising efforts.
• Foster new relationships with community businesses through corporate sponsorships.
• Help participating nonprofits, groups, and departments build capacity by providing robust fundraising tools.
• Launch equitable funding opportunities in your community.
• Raise awareness of community challenges, annual funds, and other timely initiatives.
• Build online giving confidence across donor demographics.
• Celebrate and inspire your community’s generosity.

To reap these benefits, align your giving day with your organization’s purpose and involve your community at every step of the process.

How to plan a nonprofit giving day

Like any campaign, giving days require serious planning and a clearly defined fundraising strategy. Follow these basic steps to plan yours:

1. Choose a date

It’s important to choose a date for your giving day that holds a special meaning to your cause. Many philanthropic causes have dedicated awareness months or days (such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month or World Mental Health Day) that serve as a natural starting point. 

If there isn’t a day on the calendar that clearly fits with your mission, consider any dates to which your organization has a personal connection. This might be your nonprofit’s founding date or the anniversary of a relevant historical event. No matter what, do quick online research to check if any other local charities or groups are also hosting a giving day around that time, or if there is a larger awareness movement you can join.

2. Set your fundraising goal

Next, determine how much revenue you aim to raise on your giving day and any other relevant goals for your campaign. For instance, your goals might include raising $20,000, acquiring 100 new donors, and earning 250 new followers across your organization’s social media accounts.

After defining your goals, brainstorm ways to incentivize supporters to help you reach them. Plan whether you’ll include a peer-to-peer fundraising challenge, a real-time countdown and fundraising scoreboard, or other gamification elements. 

3. Map out your messaging

How are you going to connect with your supporters and drive new donations? Because giving days are focused, 24-hour periods of fundraising, a good marketing and communication strategy is key. You want to be able to market your campaign every second of the day across various channels like email, social media, and SMS. 

Create a detailed content calendar that outlines how, where, and when you’ll promote your giving day in the weeks leading up to it and on the day of. Additionally, consider planning:

• Outreach to your most loyal supporters, asking them to spread their word or participate as a peer-to-peer fundraiser.
• Press releases or public interviews in collaboration with local media outlets.
• Cross-promotional efforts with campaign sponsors to tap into their connections and reach new audiences.

Determine how you’ll inspire supporters to give, too. For instance, many charities use giving days to showcase personal donor testimonials about what connects people to the cause. Weave testimonials, impact stories, and compelling data into your communications to drive participation.

4. Plan an event

While you don’t necessarily have to plan an event to coincide with your giving day, many organizations use them to create even more excitement and momentum for the campaign. Large, on-the-ground events like walks/runs/rides are popular ways to bring your community together, but virtual events can also generate significant impact.

With the right fundraising event software, you can easily run an exciting online auction or gala to raise additional funds and boost engagement during your giving day.

To plan a successful virtual event, invest in powerful fundraising tools and tailor all activities and auction items to your target audience. Reach out to potential sponsors for the event (or the giving day as a whole), and explain the benefits of partnering with your organization. Bonterra OneCause helps you stay organized by centralizing all aspects of event planning, from marketing to sponsor management to online bidding.

5. Launch and promote your giving day

On the actual giving day, launch your fundraiser online and kick things off with a big social media push. Don’t be shy about over-communicating! Include your giving day hashtag in all posts, and ask your followers to share with their networks.

Additionally, send emails and text messages to let your supporters know the Giving Day has officially started. Then, keep people updated throughout the day by:

• Posting status reports, personal testimonials, and other donor-created content.
• Sharing posts from donors that offer emotional messages or personal stories about their connections to your organization.
• Leveraging the social influence of sponsors and peer ambassadors by making sure they’re geared up to tweet, post, and broadcast throughout the campaign.

6. Follow up with participants

After your giving day, follow up with supporters to thank them for their generosity and announce how much money you were able to raise. Let your donors know how you plan on using their donations to drive change.

You can also share engagement metrics, such as how many people donated or how many mentions a hashtag had on social media.

Since many giving day donors are likely to be new supporters, it’s important to thank them properly and remind them of the difference they’re making so they continue to support your cause. Set the stage for strong relationships now to retain their support long-term.

Top strategies for successful giving days

Matching gifts

You’ll drive more participation and larger contributions on your giving day if you offer to match every donation dollar-for-dollar. Matching gifts empower donors to double their impact without breaking their budgets. They work especially well on giving days, as the limited time donors can access a match motivates them to donate right away.

To match donations on your giving day, partner with a major donor or corporate sponsor who is willing to match contributions up to a specified amount. You might also consider a challenge match, where the sponsor pledges to match donations only once you reach a certain goal.

Peer-to-peer fundraising

Peer-to-peer campaigns are a great addition to any giving day, as they put your organization in front of new audiences. 

To successfully integrate peer-to-peer elements into your giving day, however, you have to create the right content and information to ensure things run smoothly. This includes:

• A campaign-specific hashtag
• Peer-to-peer fundraising pages branded to your giving day campaign
• Multichannel marketing materials that participants can use to share their fundraising pages
• Participant engagement strategies to inspire widespread sharing

Corporate sponsorships

As mentioned earlier, sponsors can be instrumental supporters for your campaign. Value-aligned businesses and organizations fund your event, match donations, donate auction items, promote your campaign to a wider audience, and more. In exchange, you provide the sponsor with benefits like marketing exposure and a reputation boost.

Launch better giving days with Bonterra

Giving days have the power to transform your community. To launch your own 24-hour digital giving event, create a fundraising plan that details your goals, target audience, and marketing assets. Then, invest in modern giving day technology like GiveGab or OneCause to drive your campaign’s success.