Time flies.

One second ago, it was summer, ocean sound, and outdoor activities. Then it was pumpkin spice, cinnamon and Halloween.

Before you realize how hastily time flew by, the year-end has already arrived at the door-step.

For the non-profit world, the year-end is sacred and special. Countless 501(c)s are about begin their biggest movements of the year, starting at GivingTuesday - the very first of a series of year-end fundraising opportunities happening one week after Thanksgiving.

Campaigns come, and campaigns go. For decades, social-cause marketing has been a niche mixed with doubt, frustrations, and numerous unsuccessful attempts. For larger corporates, cause-driven marketing plays into their overarching brand development strategies. Yet for non-profit organizations, the social cause they support is the very essence of their entity.

There is no “market the cause” to build a stronger brand, because the cause itself, for the non-profit organizations, is everything. The sole goal of non-profit marketing, at least during the year-end, is to generate traffic that will convert into actual givings for their year-end campaigns, starting with Giving Tuesday.

And at some point throughout their lifespan, the non-profit organizations silently wished: if only there is a guide that will lead us to build a successful Giving Tuesday fundraiser campaign.

The Four-Stage Digital Marketing Model For Fundraisers

What if we tell you that all the frustration can be lifted with a simple four-stage structure?

What if we tell you that while this model is designed for digital marketing, it can also be applied to your community development and direct mail/traditional marketing departments?

The Four-stage Digital Marketing Model is designed to be event-oriented and cause-driven. It can be easily embedded into your larger marketing strategy and resonates with your on-going non-profit marketing strategy, or your social cause marketing plan that compliments your comprehensive corporate marketing strategy.

This Four-Stage Model will cover everything from updating static collaterals, such as website images to social media covers, to tailoring a targeted campaign from the beginning to after Giving Tuesday, transitioning towards your grand year-end fundraising campaigns.

Stage I: The Preparation Stage

The preparation stage begins at least 2 weeks prior to Giving Tuesday. This is a great time to sort through the campaigns you did in previous years, and evaluate the return-of-investment (ROI) on each of them.

While it may be too early to start blasting into your audience’s face about this year’s Giving Tuesday campaign, however, it never hurts to acknowledge the fundraising you did last year, and what differences it has made.

A key strategy here is to highlight some of the major donors from last year.

Why? Because individual minds are wired to seek for rewards, and the best reward for individual donors is telling them that you remembered their donation, and that they have indeed made a difference.

Capture your success milestones this year: how many meals you’ve provided, how many lives you have saved… While kindness cannot be measured by numbers and graphics, impact can, and impact, when it comes to adding value to individual givings, is the finer touch that brings more dedicated, royal, and most importantly, returning donors.

Acknowledgement and Recapture also includes acknowledging that your business and/or organization will be participating in Giving Tuesday this year. This can be changing the most conspicuous image on your website and social media pages to a “giving Tuesday”-themed graphic, or sending out a general announcement email telling everybody that you are holding a fundraiser for Giving Tuesday this year.

At the preparation stage, your content is general: what are the benefits of participating in Giving Tuesday; what have you done this year with the donations you’ve received; what other sources say about Giving Tuesday and why it impacts other people’s lives… The purpose is to keep your channels busy and active, while giving yourself time to create more tailored campaigns and collaterals behind the curtains.

Stage II: Excitement Stage

The excitement stage, as its name suggests, gets your audience excited about the upcoming Giving Tuesday. Ideally, the Excitement Stage begins a week before Giving Tuesday, and should constitute for the majority of your lead generation spending. At this stage, you have finalized the fundraising details within your organization. You have a date, a location, and event details ready to reach the public, and the only thing left is get people’s attention to your event.

Put the updated collaterals you’ve created this year into use. Update your static images again to reflect actual details of the Giving Tuesday fundraiser. Send out another email about what you are doing for Giving Tuesday, and change the focus of all your content towards the year-end fundraising campaigns.

Why- you ask? Because this is the time to get excited. This is the time to keep talking about what is about to happen. The time is getting close? Great - send out another email. Change up your campaigns so the new subscribers receive more urgent communications - after all, we may say the Excitement Stage is one week before the fundraiser, but realistically, we may only have three to four days maximum to get people all pumped up about it!

Stage III: Action Stage

Action Stage is extremely short, but extremely crucial. While the Excitement Stage may be the biggest ad spender, the action stage is where you go full-out and make your 100% commitment that, regardless of anything that may happen, you need to make this event a success.

THE BIG DAY BEFORE

There’s only one-day left until the event. You’ve posted about everything you could post on social media, except for a “tomorrow is the big day” type of post. Should you slow down? You wondered. After all, there are tons of offline aspects you need to handle when it comes to nonprofit marketing and running a fundraising event for Giving Tuesday.

The answer is yes. Focus on your physical event planning details and do what you need to do, while fully leverage the power behind email marketing. Send out another targeted email to your subscribers about the fundraising tomorrow, but make it simple and sweet. Give them the details they need to know, and an online giving method if they cannot be physically present to your event.

Take a breathe, clean up your social media roster and make sure there’s no “maintenance content” scheduled for tomorrow, and go to sleep.

GIVING TUESDAY

And… here it is! It’s Giving Tuesday!

This is a day of celebration, gratitude and giving back to the community. But for the marketers inside these nonprofit organizations, it is also a day of extremely high intensity.

Have you ever seen one of those twitter hashtag live interactions held during large events, such as concerts and gaming con? Well, that’s what we are doing today. You don’t have to go live on any channels, but here’s what you do have to do:

1. Hourly update of fundraising goals and completion status

2. Acknowledgement of significant givings: yes, tag them!

3. Emails sent on a regular interval with call-to-actions and updates

4. As it gets closer to the end of the day, don’t forget those last minute call-to-actions

Bottom line? Show your gratitude and your excitement. Engage your audience, and keep them in the loop as the day unfolds!

Stage IV: After-Care Stage

If you followed through the first three stages, at this point, you should let out a long breathe and say to yourself: Phew, what a long day! We pulled it through!

Yes, great job! Except that your Giving Tuesday digital marketing execution isn’t over yet. The After-Care Stage constitutes the rest of the week, or 3-5 days after Giving Tuesday. Put together a long blog looking back at this year’s Giving Tuesday. What were the goals? Did you meet them? Don’t worry - be emotional and be honest. 

Remember: this after-care stage is the perfect timing to show the human side of the executives in your organization. Put them in front of the camera and speak to your donors. Say “Thank You,” and…

… here comes the real part…

... notify them about your plans for year-end fundraising.

Don’t worry, it’s not too fast. It’s not too pushy, either. The point of After-Care stage is to tell those who didn’t participate this round that it’s okay, and it’s not too late to make a donation this year, and to tell those who did how grateful you are for their giving. If you have the funds, do offer them a free entry to your year-end fundraising event, because reciprocity, by far, is still one of the most powerful methods to create loyal partners.  

Ultimately, this Four Stage Model can be used on almost every single event you are trying to market, whether it is a nonprofit fundraiser, or a corporate appreciation dinner. It is not going to be as easy as rinse and repeat - because for anybody who’s been in the professional world long enough, he or she would know there is no real rinse & repeat in any industry. This Model’s adaptability must be accompanied by customization to maximize the effectiveness, and that calls for hard work.

However, if you are looking for something steady and verified to boost your Giving Tuesday campaign, or even your year-end fundraiser, this Four Stage Model may be exactly what you are looking for. For decades, social cause marketing has received the notorious name of forcing companies to do “free work,” that even for nonprofit organizations whose core is the social cause they support, it is still difficult to properly “market” themselves due to extremely low return-on-investment.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. A 501(c) doesn’t have to count their fate on other people’s goodness and kindness. The organization, with the right strategy and tools, can freely control their own fate and growth, and expand the same way any other for profit businesses do. 

At the end of the day, here’s what we are trying to achieve: we want to proudly tell you that lead generation for nonprofit is not random, and digital marketing for nonprofit is not a waste of money and time.