Creative Ways to Promote GivingTuesday

October 14, 2022

If there’s one thing we love to do, it is brainstorming. We love to come up with ideas. We don’t always love to make them happen, but we love the joy of considering them. I listen to podcasts and read emails, newsletters and blog posts just for the ideas to get my creative juices flowing. 

So today, we’re gonna get your creative juices flowing and talk about creative ways to promote GivingTuesday. 

Have we done all these things? Absolutely not. 

Did we think of them? Absolutely.  

Before we dig into those ideas, I want you to remember your GivingTuesday campaign doesn’t start on GivingTuesday. Each campaign you run builds on the one before. Because each even and fundraiser you run builds your assets and momentum, and shares what you do with the community, your volunteers and your donors. 

All that goodwill is just waiting around for you to cash in on GivingTuesday. 

Some of these ideas will work great for GivingTuesday itself, and others you’ll want to start beforehand. Because some people don’t know about all the awesomeness of GivingTuesday. To them, it’s Taco Tuesday or the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. We need to start talking to those folks early. 

25 ideas to promote GivingTuesday

1. Yard signs

I freaking love yard signs. They’re cheap and people really do see them. Think about when you’re driving down the road, and your kids are screaming out the window, “the sign said FREE PUPPIES!” 

Yard signs don’t have to be fancy, friends. I see signs in my neighborhood that are handwritten on corrugated plastic. You could put your organization’s name and “support us on GivingTuesday” plus the date. Done. 

2. Promo on a local radio station

A lot of local radio stations, especially talk radio, do promos in our town. Just imagine the good you would be doing by appearing on the radio. You wouldn’t just be promoting your nonprofit, you would be promoting GivingTuesday for all nonprofits.

3. Hand out stickers at the mall on Black Friday

What if you printed fun stickers and walked around the mall putting stickers on people’s shirts on Black Friday? OK, so touching people is a little weird, but you could get stickers printed about GivingTuesday and pass them out on Black Friday. Depending on the style of sticker, they aren’t super expensive, and you may be able to find a local printer who would donate them if you asked. 

4. Sidewalk chalk 

Find a local business with great foot traffic, go downtown, go to the local universities or, once again, visit the malls. Write a GivingTuesday message on the pavement. You can even promote it on your driveway—just think of all the places people could pass your message for free! 

5. Balloons

Who doesn’t love balloons!? You can hand balloons out or fill a fence with balloons for attention. You can do all kinds of things with balloons – just balloons everywhere. 

Fill your executive director’s office with balloons, video it and post it on Facebook. Or, if you are a typical employee who doesn’t work for a nonprofit, fill someone else’s cubicle with balloons. Isn’t that fun? Balloons! Balloons are awesome. 

6. Get a smash cake (and babies?)

Stick with me on this idea. Have two babies and two smash cakes. One smash cake has GivingTuesday on it. One smash cake has your organization’s logo on it. Then have a race to see which baby can smash the cake first and put it on Facebook Live. 

I just like cake. Definitely do something with cake.

7. Email 

Email is one of the highest converting donation items for our year-end giving campaign, CoMoGives. Last year, the conversion rate was around 15% for email, which means people go to the website, and their likelihood of donating because they came in via email is 15%. 

(Check out one of our other episodes about email – Year-End Giving Email Q & A)

But seriously, send an email. It costs you basically nothing. Send multiple emails. If you are trying to write your GivingTuesday emails, and you’re starting from scratch, you are doing it the hard way. We have free GivingTuesday email templates! Consider it our gift to help you promote GivingTuesday.

8. Paint your car windows

Think about when you were in high school, and a sports team went to state. You painted your car windows to show your enthusiasm. You can do the same thing for GivingTuesday! Get as many people to put “Go GivingTuesday!” on their car windows with your organization’s name as you can. Maybe you have someone super artistic who can draw your organization’s logo. Get creative. Have a car decorating party, like a tailgate to prep for all the goodness.

9. Window paint at local businesses

You could also paint windows at local businesses. Any place where there’s foot traffic would be great for this. Paint the windows at your office so when people walk or drive by, they are reminded about you and GivingTuesday.  

10. Making and displaying posters

Make some posters and display them everywhere. Think about drawing attention to yourself in a positive way. You could stand on the busiest corner in your town and have a poster saying, “Go CoMoGives.” Or, we could. We do CoMoGives. You would have something like “Honk Honk for GivingTuesday! Honk for [name of your organization!” 

Also, if you’re not an attract attention kind of person, you could hang posters in every grocery store, diner, school, break room, and bathroom. Just get the information out there. 

CoMoGives Sidebar

For those who don’t know what CoMoGives is, CoMoGives is our community’s month-long year-end giving campaign. It’s powered by the Community Foundation of Central Missouri, and MayeCreate is the marketing and web design arm of that partnership. So we help our local nonprofits run their year-end giving campaigns through CoMoGives.com. Last year, our local nonprofits earned over $1.8 million through that campaign. CoMoGives kicks off on GivingTuesday, and you can donate to one of our local nonprofits.

11. Social media posts

If you’re not posting on your social media and telling the people who like and follow you about GivingTuesday, you should be. Do a countdown to GivingTuesday. Make it move and flash – but in a responsible, ADA-compliant way.

12. Hand out information at local businesses

It’s pretty common when I checkout at a local business, to be asked, “would you like to donate $1 to [name of organization]?” Find a local business with the same core values as yours and see if you can hand out information at checkout or if they’ll partner for donating. 

If you are a humane society, find the local pet store. Then stand there and give people your little business card, a flier, a sticker, and remind them of who you are around GivingTuesday. Or have the business add your information to the sack of goodies their customer just bought.

13. Mailings

Postcards can be done really cost-effectively. Especially those little four-by-six ones, they can be super inexpensive to print and mail. You can also do Every Door Direct Mail, which is provided by the US Postal Service, and you can physically mail out something to an entire mailing route for a reduced price (but not with 4×6 cards…they have some pretty specific sizing requirements). 

Mailings really do work, and you can reach people you don’t talk to all the time. Mailings will have all kinds of new people learning about your organization and GivingTuesday. 

14. Competitions

I heard of an event the other day where you pay to nominate people for the event, and then they had to pay to get out of the event if they didn’t want to participate. Genius – this nonprofit was making money on both sides. 

You could have competitions like that or competitions between staff or volunteers. You can have a Facebook competition; you can have a goal that you’re trying to meet. There are lots of ways to make it competitive.

15. Pay for release

A related idea is at school fundraisers, we have the jail where you have to pay for tickets to put someone in jail, and then they have to pay tickets to get out of jail. It seems a little negative, so find a way to put a positive spin on it. 

Unchained Melodies ran with this idea last year for CoMoGives. They put their director in a dog kennel (they are a rescue organization and it was a super nice kennel, I promise) until they raised enough money to get out of the dog kennel. They ended up raising $2,200!

16. Virtually frame someone

Do something virtual where you put a frame around somebody in a photo. Make sure the frame has your logo and GivingTuesday on it. Say, “you’ve been framed,” and then they have to share the post three times or something like that. Once someone is no longer framed, they can choose a new person and keep it going. 

17. Social media frames

Don’t forget about social media frames. Those are the little things you see around people’s profile pictures. You can create your own promoting your organization and GivingTuesday and encourage your followers to use it. 

18. Utilize your newsletter

This one takes some pre-planning. If you have a printed newsletter, put information about GivingTuesday in it starting at least a month before. Talk about what you will use this year’s donations for, and make sure you remind people about it. You can do the same with an email newsletter. 

19. Tacos

Celebrate GivingTuesday with tacos because tacos are my favorite food other than cake, and it’s Tuesday. Do a Taco Tuesday for GivingTuesday. Well, tacos every day, but especially for GivingTuesday. 

20. T-shirts

Have all of your supporters wear a T-shirt they’ve gotten from your organization. Then have them take pictures of themselves in the T-shirts, and post them on social media with #GivingTuesday to support you. 

I love to buy T-shirts from organizations for my kids because they love them. They feel so proud they’re wearing one. One of my daughter’s favorite T-shirts is from a nonprofit, and she wears it on all her non-dress code days. She’s just so proud to be supporting an organization. Have all your supporters feel that pride too on GivingTuesday.

21. Partner with a school

Partnering with a school is a great option because what better way to get people excited than through the eyes of children? If a child gets excited, then their parents are excited. It’s this trickle-up effect of getting people to know about your organization on GivingTuesday.

When you partner with the school, give them ideas of how the kids can do good. They have their hearts there. We just have to empower them to do it.  

22. Visit other local organizations

Give a talk to your local Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club, or similar group. They invite speakers into their meetings, and often are searching for people. Sign up, and talk about GivingTuesday, what it means and what they can do to support nonprofits like the one you represent. 

23. Wear costumes

Before you start walking around promoting GivingTuesday in a full dinosaur suit, let’s explain what we mean by costumes. Not that we’re opposed to you promoting GivingTuesday wearing a dinosaur suit. 

We mean wearing things that are going to spark a conversation. For example, when I went to the CoMoGives kickoff, I wore a dress with a map on it. It basically looks like a globe printed on a dress, and I cannot tell you how many people came up to start a conversation because of my dress. Wear something just strange enough to get people to come over and talk to you and have a conversation about GivingTuesday or a dinosaur costume…it’s up to you.

24. Canvassing on Black Friday

Consider putting postcards under people’s windshield wipers. We think that’s legal*

Or you could pass things out as you’re waiting in line to get into a store, as long as it isn’t considered loitering. Get permission first, but find a way to take advantage of people being out and about. 

*MayeCreate is not held liable for any illegal actions you take after reading our suggestions. As Stacy tells her small humans, “you are in control of your own body.” 

25. Ask businesses for promotion on Cyber Monday

Ask local businesses you align with to specifically promote GivingTuesday in their Cyber Monday emails, newsletters and other marketing material. They’re already reaching out to their customers, so piggyback on that if you can. 

Which one is your favorite? 

We’re partial to cake. Smash cakes for babies in costumes. Make a note of it now. Maybe this year we should dress up in costumes and have a CoMoGives smash cake in the middle of our conference table. We’re sure this is going to be a popular idea with John Baker, the Executive Director of the Community Foundation. Maybe he could smash the cake. Either way, we’re smashing cakes for Giving Tuesday. 

Now we have to make it happen. 

That’s the biggest thing, now we have this idea, and we should make it happen.  

Notice that we did not choose 400 different new things, and that’s important too. You want to do promotional things, but you can’t pick everything on this list. Pick the ones that make the most sense to you and your organization. Consider what makes the most sense for your team because your team has to be willing to do them. If your team isn’t willing to smash a cake with their face and pretend to be a baby, then that won’t work. 

Keep doing the stuff you know works, but don’t do everything. 

There is too much of a good thing. Too much cake is bad unless you’re smashing it.