Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving and the widely recognized Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events, GivingTuesday marks the formal beginning of the giving season. On this day, companies rally their employees to give gifts of time, money, skills, goods, and advocacy in an effort to show that everyone has something to give and that every act of generosity counts.

With dozens of ways to celebrate, give back, and engage your workforce, developing a GivingTuesday campaign can be time-consuming. Luckily, CyberGrants is here to help! Our latest Impact Playbook was designed to streamline your GivingTuesday planning process and reduce the time, energy, and resources it takes to execute a successful program.

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Whether this is your first GivingTuesday or you’re a seasoned professional, our step-by-step guide contains everything you need to make this year the most generous yet! Here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect when your download our GivingTuesday Impact Playbook.

Step 1: Rally Your Workforce

GivingTuesday is rooted in the simple idea that every act of generosity counts and everyone has something to give. Your employees are likely already giving back—whether it’s through donating clothing, giving blood, or helping out an elderly neighbor—doing good is part of everyone’s daily lives. This GivingTuesday, elevate your employees’ everyday efforts by implementing programs that maximize their impact. Here are a few suggestions:

• Match Employee Donations: Many of your employees likely plan to support causes or nonprofits that matter to them on GivingTuesday. To double the impact of their efforts, implement a dollar-for-dollar matching program.

• Encourage Volunteering: Most volunteerism activities take place during the workday, making it challenging to balance giving back and collecting a paycheck. This GivingTuesday, encourage your employees to take time to give back to their communities by offering paid volunteer time off (VTO).

• Make Giving a No-Brainer: Make GivingTuesday participation flexible and accessible for anyone by offering your workforce a charitable spending account. Provide your employees with a giving budget ($25, $50, $100, etc.) and a timeframe, and the rest is up to them! As a result, employees can use the funds to support any cause they care about, making GivingTuesday participation a no-brainer!

• Work With Your Nonprofit Partners: Your strategic nonprofit partners likely have big plans for GivingTuesday. Connect with them to see what they have planned. Many will likely have campaigns, events, and content you can share with your employees to drive engagement.

• After the Big Day: Once GivingTuesday comes to an end, encourage current participants to give year-round with a payroll deduction. Not only does this make it easy for your employees to give, but it’s great for nonprofits, too! Recurring employee giving can help nonprofits build a more reliable source of income.

Step 2: Define Your Strategy

Now that we’ve offered some GivingTuesday campaign ideas, it’s time to define your strategy. For example, if you plan to offer your employees a charitable spending account, what’s the budget? Is there a limited timeframe? What kinds of nonprofits are eligible? You’ll need to answer these questions before implementing a successful program.

GivingTuesday is also a great opportunity to engage new participants who have yet to get involved in your CSR programming. Brainstorm ways to target an unengaged segment of your workforce and incentivize participation. Getting their foot in the door is the hard part. Once they’re in, it’s easier to build a long-term, recurring donor base!

Ready to define your strategy? Download our latest Impact Playbook to fill out your campaign strategy worksheet.

Step 3: Communicate Your Efforts

Once you’ve outlined your campaign and identified your goals, it’s time to create a communications plan! With well-timed emails, website promotion, and engaging social media content, you can spark interest and incite action from your community before the giving day officially starts. Plan ahead and roll out your GivingTuesday communications several weeks before the big day. In doing so, you’ll generate plenty of excitement, and your employees will be better equipped to participate. Here are a few communication tactics that we recommend.

• Build a Landing Page: In order to make GivingTuesday simple and easy for anyone to get involved, it’s important to have your program information, guidelines, tools, etc. in one location. We suggest building a GivingTuesday landing page where your content can be easily located and shared with necessary stakeholders.
• Develop an Email Series: In order to ensure all stakeholders are aware of your efforts, it's important to start email communications sooner rather than later. We recommend sending a series of reminders leading up to the big day!
• Share Your Efforts on Social Media: This GivingTuesday, don’t discredit the power of social media! Encourage employees to share GivingTuesday highlights and photos and interact with each other’s activities. This is a great way to build deeper connections amongst your workforce and amplify even more causes—a win-win!

At CyberGrants, we know building a successful communications plan takes time, energy, and resources. That’s why we developed a series of templates to help guide your outreach strategy. Download our latest Impact Playbook for a sample GivingTuesday landing page, a series of email templates, social media best practices, and sample social media posts.

Step 4: Launch Your Campaign

Follow our campaign checklist to ensure you’re ready to launch a successful GivingTuesday campaign company-wide!

1. Rally Your Workforce: Develop a program to amplify your employees’ current efforts to give back and do good. Consider implementing a matching program, offering VTO, or putting funds into a charitable spending account.
2. Define Your Strategy: We’ve made it easy for you to outline program parameters, set goals, identify stakeholders and so much more with our pre-made templates.
3. Build a Content Hub: Ensure maximum participation by housing all of your program information and content in one, easy-to-find place.
4. Communicate Your Efforts: Spread the word with email communications and encourage employees to share their efforts on social media.

Step 5: Evaluate Your Success

When GivingTuesday comes to a close, it’s important to evaluate your program’s success. Data analysis at the end of your campaign is a powerful way to understand best practices and areas of opportunity for next year. Begin with the essentials:

1. What was the goal, and did we meet it?
2. By how much did we exceed or fall short?
3. How much did we raise or donate?
4. How many employees participated?
5. What kind of giving trends emerged?

Once you’ve got these numbers in hand, you should sit down with your team and explore how this year compared to previous GivingTuesday initiatives:

1. How did it compare to past campaigns?
2. Is there anything they would want to change?
3. What do they hope to see included in future campaigns?
4. Share your results internally and externally to drive brand awareness and share all the social good that was made possible!

Your employees have a unique perspective that will contribute to overall success. Listen to their campaign takeaways and integrate them into next year’s GivingTuesday program!

Unify & Amplify All Your Giving Efforts

GivingTuesday is coming up on November 29, 2022—are you prepared to rally your workforce and give back? Our Impact Playbook will help you design an impactful campaign tailored to how and where your employees want to give. With our strategy worksheets, email templates, sample social media posts, additional resources, and more, you’ll have everything you need to start giving and making a difference in your communities. Get your copy today!

But giving back doesn’t stop there! Although GivingTuesday is just one day, there are 51 other Tuesdays throughout the year. Make the magic of GivingTuesday last all year by engaging your employees in year-round giving. See how CyberGrants’ unique giving ecosystem can unify and amplify your giving efforts by bringing all of your philanthropy into one synergistic environment. Sign up for a personalized walkthrough!

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CyberGrants

CyberGrants

CyberGrants is a leading provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for corporate social responsibility management. CyberGrants’ mission is to provide innovative software and services in the most secure and efficient way to help companies manage all CSR initiatives from employee volunteer programs to the entire grants lifecycle. With nearly 20 years experience, CyberGrants has delivered grants management software and corporate philanthropy program software to many of the largest companies and foundations in the world, including more than 50% of the Fortune 100. For additional information on CyberGrants, visit www.cybergrants.com.

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