$1.6M Online Giving Campaign Debrief – Celebrating CoMoGives 2020

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$1.6M Online Giving Campaign Debrief – Celebrating CoMoGives 2020

Join me as I dig in and debrief the awesomeness and lessons learned from CoMoGives 2020, our community’s $1.6M year-end online giving campaign with John Baker, Executive Director of the Community Foundation of Central Missouri and Erika Payne, MayeCreate Project Manager.

Campaign Debrief – Celebrating CoMoGives 2020 Cliff Notes

Initially our goal was to raise $1 million, but ended up exceeding that and had to set a new goal of $1.6 million, which we also exceeded. Our team and partners had to adapt to the pandemic – Donors had reductions in income and couldn’t give what they wanted to, nonprofits couldn’t have their galas and events, so revenue fell for nonprofits.

December 2020’s year-end giving campaign succeeded because of a perfect storm of positive factors:

Donors who were aware of the need, and therefore the real value and importance of their giving
Organizations who really, really, really needed that income, and therefore worked really hard to get people to go to CoMoGives.com to donate
Plus, the first day of the campaign started on Dec. 1st which was also Giving Tuesday, so all of our marketing channels were clear in the message that people needed to start giving on that day
CoMoGives has been happening every year for a long time, so we had good awareness already
Donors were also more confident over time in what they needed to do and how and why (why donate online vs. paper check, for instance)
Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to create our usual Giving Guides to pass out, so we made a mailer and sent it to thousands of households

CoMoGives Tips

Having real-time popups on your website that shows who just donated and how much, is a great way to encourage more people to give (social proof)
Give people the option to cover your credit card transaction fees, and most will do so
Make sure you make it easy for donors to give with a fast website
Set reasonable fundraising goals for yourself, depending on how long you’ve been campaigning and how big your donor and potential donor list is
Steer away from raffles because raffles are not tax-deductible for donors according to the IRS
Doing Facebook Lives for our organizations were also a major driver of awareness and engagement