Share this article
Last year, 35 million people participated in Giving Tuesday and over 2.7 billion dollars were raised for nonprofits in the United States alone. Since the event’s creation in 2012, donations collected during Giving Tuesday have grown over 2,000%! Originally created for social media with a simple hashtag, Giving Tuesday has become a global fundraising phenomenon. This 24-hour event is driven on social media and last year alone received billions of social media impressions.
If your nonprofit wants to take advantage of the Giving Tuesday momentum, you’ll need a social media strategy for this event. In this blog series I’ll go over four different steps to create a great Giving Tuesday social media strategy. I’m kicking off the series with the easiest and broadest step your nonprofit can take to ensure Giving Tuesday success—creating a posting timeline.
Why create a posting timeline?
A timeline will help you stay organized and on top of creating good social media content for your different platforms. The further ahead you plan, the more time you can spend creating fun visuals and engaging copy for your posts. Deciding how often you should post, and when, will give your staff clear deadlines and goals to work toward.
Use our sample timeline below to begin building your own posting schedule!
Our recommended timeline:
One month before
Email plug
Email your supporters a Giving Tuesday save-the-date and include links to each of your nonprofit’s social media accounts. Be sure to mention in your email that supporters should keep an eye on your social media channels for the latest Giving Tuesday news and updates. In all your following Giving Tuesday emails make sure you include links to your social media handles. This practice drives traffic to where you’ll be communicating the most about your Giving Tuesday campaign—social media!
First social media post about Giving Tuesday
Announce on social media that your nonprofit will be participating in Giving Tuesday. This post should function as a save-the-date and build anticipation for the event.
Two weeks and one week before
Social countdown posts
Remind your followers that Giving Tuesday is right around the corner. Multiple countdown posts aren’t overkill! Facebook users share 684,478 pieces of content per minute. Each day more than 500 million tweets are processed on X and 80 million photos are posted to Instagram. A second and even a third countdown post helps keep your Giving Tuesday campaign top-of-mind for your supporters.
One day before
Your final reminder post
Foreshadow any matching challenges or stories your nonprofit will be sharing during Giving Tuesday, without giving too many of the details away. Remind your supporters that you need their participation to make the day a success.
During Giving Tuesday
You will need a thorough schedule of social media posts. Why? Because (don’t panic) you should aim to post hourly during the hours your supporters are awake. On Giving Tuesday tens of thousands of nonprofits will also be posting about Giving Tuesday. To make sure your posts aren’t bogged down in the traffic, you’ll need a two-part recipe for success. Part one: volume. Part two: value (we’ll get to value a little later in this blog series).
You can post less frequently during hours your target audience may be asleep, but don’t forget an early kickoff post and a post near the end of the night to inform your followers that you’ll announce your progress in the morning. To ease the stress of posting manually, schedule your posts in advance on a site like Buffer or within Facebook itself.
We’ll provide specific examples of what you can post during Giving Tuesday later on in this series!
Day after Giving Tuesday
The thank you
Thank everyone who gave and participated in your Giving Tuesday campaign. Share how many donations you received, how much your nonprofit raised, and what your nonprofit plans to do with the donations received during Giving Tuesday.
Next up
Once you’ve created a posting timeline that works for your nonprofit, you’ll be ready to begin creating content. Before you begin composing challenge tweets and Facebook fundraising updates, it’s important to create a clear brand for your Giving Tuesday campaign. A cohesive design and uniform voice will help your Giving Tuesday campaign become more recognizable and add legitimacy to your campaign. In the next blog I’ll cover branding your Giving Tuesday campaign. Read it here.
Up Next in The Giving Tuesday Social Media Playbook
Looking for more Giving Tuesday goodness? We’ve got you covered with the Giving Tuesday Resource Center.
You might enjoy
Key End-of-Year Giving Trends: Giving Tuesday vs. December 31
Donor Acquisition and Retention
