Giving Tuesday Playbook: Convert Digital Audience to Donations
If you missed our Giving Tuesday webinar last week, then you missed a fun, enriching, and interactive discussion that laid out a clear and proven way to convert your current digital audience into dollars raised. But not to worry -- you can find the video above, the slides here, and our step-by-step playbook below.
We have freely shared a LOT of actionable, high-ROI insight here for public media teams in marketing, membership, audience, and fundraising. This is part of a broader solution intended to help modernize and optimize the digital fundraising efforts for any public media organization. In return, please consider sharing this content with someone else at your organization who you know would find this content impactful.
The Data: Your Top Two Takeaways
In polling the leaders who attended, there were two significant, data-led opportunities we found:
📊 NONE of the public media marketing teams we polled said they were using donor lists in any outreach outside of email. It was a shock to our team to discover so many touchpoints with prospective members were lost by not doing this, which is a strategy used in other orgs and companies for many years. Why not also reach the very same people on Instagram or Reddit or YouTube? It's cheaper, more reliable, and, powered by strong social proof, directly compels the warmest leads to convert to donors.
💸 80% of organizations are NOT using a paid search account for prime fundraising times (like Giving Tuesday or end-of-year drives). While you may be leaning on your Google Grant through the year, this account type is bid-limited and provides poor geographic targeting for local nonprofits. Google categorically will not show grant ads above paying advertisers -- how can you reach folks searching for "where to donate on giving tuesday" when you're last in line for the prospective donor's attention? Q2 is a time when you're competing against every nonprofit and charity and won't been seen otherwise.
Both of these are mission-critical, time-tested initiatives that are intuitive, data-driven, and move the needle significantly with respect to budget -- we know this because we've seen it succeed in our work for other nonprofits and public media orgs. What is your plan for taking advantage of this in the next month?
The Playbook: Tactics & Timeline
We shared on the webinar some very specific steps to take which are proven to help convert your existing pipeline into membership and dollars raised. Part of this was mapping out the actual timeline we recommend to public media teams implement in order to start building the case with prospects early to ensure effective demand conversion during the very tight window that is the day itself.
Importantly, as attendees will recall, the best thing is to plant the seeds early — a year or more beforehand — to reap the benefits at peak fundraising times in Q2. As our team shared, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.”
But it’s not too late! By laying the foundation today with promoted “organic” posts (and for the next couple weeks) and activating your search advertising (to “warm up” the data and get out of the learning phase), you should still expect record campaign results (especially if you’ve not implemented this playbook previously).
Finally, and transparently, we shared some of the most important tactics you’ll need in updating your organization’s digital fundraising apparatus. These are provided again in brief here to help yo on giving Tuesday, in Q2, and well beyond into the next year.
🌱 Promote Organic Content: For one week before your fundraising drive, focus on boosting your organic posts. This builds anticipation and engages your audience organically.
🎥 Short-Form Video All the Way: Utilize short-form videos for all your assets on organic and paid efforts in Meta (Facebook and Instagram) to capture attention effectively. This is consistent with best practices and a proven performer.
🔍 Optimize Search Ads:
Branded Ads: Target terms like "stream WXYZ" to take advantage of existing demand
Topical Ads: Use keywords such as “local charities for Giving Tuesday” or “where to donate at year-end.”
⭐️ Important:
If you're currently using a Google Grant, it is imperative to supplement this with a paid Google Ads account to achieve any level of visibility during peak drive times. You’ll otherwise be drowned out by other, paying mission-led organizations.
Strongly consider Microsoft Ads (Bing) as a supplemental ad campaign; the competition can be high on Google and the audience on Bing aligns with donors (Boomers, Tablet users, etc.) and can be a worthwhile investment. We have strong data (from public media) backing this up — just ask!
💰 Don’t Hesitate to Sell: While using transactional language may not feel natural, it is necessary during drive times (and, you guessed it, doing so is backed by the data). Start targeting existing donor email lists on platforms like Meta and Reddit, including lapsed and prospective donors. Targeting audiences who are already familiar with your organization can lead to immediate engagement and support. Folks want to give — you just have to ask!
❓ Avoid New, Unproven Channels: Stick with strategies that you know will work, especially when time is of the essence. Save experimentation for between campaigns.
⭐️ Important: Stay far away from the broad “recommendations” provided by the ad platforms themselves, whose revenue goals often do not align with yours.
Not sure where to start? Whether you need help allocating budget, accessing the right tools, or achieving buy-in internally to ensure a high-impact campaign, our team has the public media experience and data-backed strategies needed for you and your org to see measurable success in a dynamic fundraising environment. Let us know how we can get started helping you.✊
