Done With Giving Tuesday? Here Are Some Of The Best Ways To Thank Your Donors

After months of planning and campaigning, your Giving Tuesday campaign finally comes to an end. Your efforts have paid off. You raised a lot of money, acquired new donors, and got the word out about your organization. 

Now what? 

Well, Giving Tuesday might be over, but the season of giving is not done yet. Giving Tuesday is just the beginning of year-end giving, and you want to keep the momentum alive. 

How do you do that? 

Simple; you start by thanking your supporters. Connecting with your audience to thank them gives you the opportunity to:

• Keep the conversation going with supporters and nurture them for year-end giving (to donate or contribute in other ways).
• Engage with new donors and get into a deeper conversation with them to retain them. 
• Showcase your impact to prospects considering donating and acquiring them during year-end giving. 

In this post, we’ll dive into the different ways to send out your Giving Tuesday Thank Yous to help you with this. 

How do you say thank you for Giving Tuesday? 

Before conveying your gratitude to people, keep in mind that you have to reach two segments of audiences. 

1. Acquired donors: People who donated during your Giving Tuesday campaign.
2. Prospective donors: People planning to give to you but haven’t done it yet. 

Type of supporter	Thank you message type	Preferred channels
Acquired donors	A personalized message conveyed via a personal communication channel.	• Email • Letters • Phone Calls
Prospective donors	Publicly posted thank-you message (since you may not have their contact details) that also highlights the impact made.	• Social media posts • Blog posts.

Therefore, there are two types of Giving Tuesday thank-you notes that you need to plan out. 

Let’s look at some examples you can take inspiration from. 

Giving Tuesday Thank You campaign for donors. 

The channel you use to convey your gratitude to donors depends on the donor’s engagement level. For example, repeat supporters are generally more engaged than first-time small donors and hence need to be interacted with via more personal channels like calls. 

But, this doesn’t mean that new donors shouldn’t be given personal attention. They should! 

It’s only that in a time-sensitive campaign, you may not have the resources to connect with each donor personally. So you may have to prioritize. 

Here are some ways to thank your Giving Tuesday supporters in ascending order of engagement.   

Giving Tuesday Thank You Email

Email is the perfect channel to reach out to a mass audience in a short period. 

It’s best suited for newly acquired donors. But, you can also send it out to strong supporters as an additional thank you. No harm in that! In fact, you can even dedicate an entire newsletter to thank Giving Tuesday supporters. 

Here’s an example of a Giving Tuesday email sent by Southern Pines Animal Shelter to thank and encourage supporters.  

Takeaways from the email

• Individual sender: This is an essential aspect of personalization. Send emails as an individual sender (preferably a high-level executive). It makes donors feel important and also gives them a contact in the organization they can reach out to. 
• Video for added engagement: A video in your email is unique and engaging. It also improves your click-through rates by 300%. This means more traffic to your nonprofit’s website, which in turn can improve your SEO and other fundraising efforts (like merchandise sales). 
• Mention of the total amount raised: This is essential for transparency, which breeds trust in your brand.  

You May Also Like: Website Prep Tips for Giving Tuesday Campaigns

Giving Tuesday Thank You Letter

Although a letter is just the physical form of an email, it’s more personal. It takes a little more effort to send out direct mail, and people appreciate it. In fact, 73% of Americans say they prefer being contacted via direct mail.

In 2018, Kids Now, an organization working to uplift underprivileged youth, sent out excellent thank you letters to their donors. 

Takeaways from the letter

• Extensive personalization: Not only does the letter address the reader by name and speaks to them in the first person, but it also includes a handwritten note at the end. This is the kind of personalization you should aim for to breed donor loyalty. 
• Storytelling approach for impact: While the letter highlights the exact impact of the donation, it augments the statement with a story. Stories are highly effective in touching donors’ hearts and driving the desired actions. 
• Opportunity to engage donors further: The letter ends with an event invite reminder to get the donor more closely involved with the organization. It’s a simple but effective way to keep the donor engaged and establish a stronger relationship. 
• Contact details: The letter also provides the sender’s contact details, should the donor want to get in touch. It’s an excellent practice to convey how important the donor is to you by showing that you’re just a call/email away. 

Read Next: Ending The Year With A Smile: How To Write The Perfect Year-end Thank You Letter

Giving Tuesday Thank You Calls

Communication can’t get more personal than a phone call. 

It allows you to have a dynamic, one-to-one conversation with supporters. And when the conversation is to express your gratitude (and not ask for something), you’re bound to leave your supporters smiling. This feeling is what will keep them coming back!

Calling people at scale can be a laborious task. That is unless you’re using a call center software. 

A calling solution automates time-consuming processes (like dialing numbers and waiting for an answer), so you can focus on the conversation rather than these trivial tasks. 

It also displays a calling script for reference while on a call. With this, even inexperienced volunteers can make calls for you, thereby allowing you to cover more extensive supporter lists. 

Here’s an example of a Giving Tuesday Thank You call script:  

Note: The statements in italics are instructions for the caller to follow. The ones in bold indicate different scenarios and appropriate responses for them. 

Takeaways from the calling script:

• Get straight to the acknowledgment: When someone calls on behalf of a nonprofit, the first assumption people may make is that it is to ask for something. This assumption can affect their willingness to talk. Don’t let that happen. Get to thanking them immediately (and assure them that you’re not asking for anything more). 
• List out instructions for different scenarios: Not all calls will be the same. You will have to train your callers in actively listening and picking up social cues and providing appropriate responses for different situations to make sure the call goes well. 
• Engage them in a conversation to get more data: If the donor seems interested in speaking, try to collect some data on the donor by asking them a few questions. This data comes in handy for future interactions and nurturing. 

Bonus: Giving Tuesday Thank You Texts

Although they are not as widely adopted, thank-you texts are also quite personal and engaging. 

Studies show that people prefer communicating with businesses over text rather than calls. The reason is apparent; texts are not intrusive. People can read them at any time. But an added advantage with SMS is their open rates (98%) making them more effective than emails. 

Here’s an example of a Giving Tuesday thank you text for your supporters. 

Takeaways from the text:

• MMS for maximum engagement: An SMS’ character limit (160) would restrict you from conveying your gratitude well. But with an MMS, you get a higher character limit (1600) and can craft a much better message. Moreover, an image also makes text messages more engaging.  
• Showcasing impact: Apart from mentioning the amount raised, the MMS also shows the money being used as intended with a picture of the beneficiaries receiving the support. This, in turn, builds trust. 

Looking for a tool that offers both texting (SMS and MMS) and calling solutions? CallHub’s the one you’re looking for. Sign up for free and give it a go!

Giving Tuesday Thank You’s for nurturing.

You may not always have your prospects’ contact details to showcase your impact to them personally. Hence, your Giving Tuesday thank yous for this audience has to be more public.

While this does help pull prospects who are considering donating to you a step closer, it’s also an opportunity to spread awareness about your organization to others. 

Here are a few ways for you to spread your gratitude far and wide for the public to see. 

Giving Tuesday Thank You Blog

Your blog is the perfect marketing tool that you can use to thank your supporters. With a blog post, you have the flexibility to go in-depth about your campaign and talk about your impact. 

While this helps nurture prospects by showing them what you achieved/will achieve, an active and regular blog is also great for SEO. It comes in handy in bringing in new reader traffic and spreading awareness about your organization.  

Here’s an example of a Giving Tuesday Thank You blog put out by the Arthritis Foundation. 

Takeaways from the blog:

• Single relatable beneficiary: For a stronger impact, your story needs to have a single character that the hero (donor) helps. Talking about a beneficiary group dilutes the effect of readers being able to place themselves in the characters’ shoes and feel their challenges. In this case, the character is Carson, who, just like everyone else, wants to live a happy and pain-free life. 
• Nonprofit’s mission: The blog also briefly highlights its mission and goals. This gives new prospects (unaware of your organization) a complete picture of your organization. While this blog does so very briefly, we recommend you go into a little more detail about your mission in your posts.  
• Donation CTA: The blog ends with a compelling CTA giving new prospects a chance to make a difference. Having a donation CTA is essential as the blog’s objective is to reach out to prospects and get them to donate.  

You May Also Like: Tips and Tricks for an Effective Annual Appeal Letter

Giving Tuesday Thank You Social Media Templates

Social media is another public platform that helps you spread your message far and wide. An added advantage of social media is that it makes it easier to reach your donors’ networks. 

How?

Whenever you put out a post and a prospect/donor engages with it (likes, comments on, or shares it), their network gets a notification about it. This puts you in front of a whole new audience. 

Toronto Cat Rescue put out a wonderful Giving Tuesday Thank You post for their followers and prospects. 

Takeaways from the post:

• Catchy visuals: Most social channels are highly visual platforms, and adding a nice catchy image works best to grab followers’ attention. In this case, the picture is that of an adorable beneficiary which is hard to ignore. Make sure you add such media while creating social media templates.
• Use of hashtags: Hashtags make your posts searchable. So people looking for or browsing through content related to the hashtag are bound to come across your post. Just make sure to use trending or popular hashtags relevant to your post (#GivingTuesday in this case).
• Cliffhanger: The post ends with a cliffhanger, thereby encouraging people who come across it to keep an eye out on the organization’s social feed. It’s a simple trick to keep followers engaged and even get people who might be interested in knowing about the impact to follow you. 

These were a few strategies to convey your Giving Tuesday Thank Yous to your supporters. Incorporate them during your Giving Tuesday campaign planning. While you can fill in the specifics after the campaign, it’ll be good to have some templates/outlines ready. 
Aim to keep the conversation going with your supporters and prospects to transition them into your year-end giving campaign seamlessly.