‘Giving days’ have existed in the nonprofit and charitable sector for several years, both in one-off fundraisers and regular events such as Giving Tuesday, an annual opportunity to celebrate philanthropy, and have also been prominent in US school development and advancement. Inspired by the success of US giving days, many schools in the UK and Europe have begun borrowing the construct of a 24-hour 'peak' period providing a sense of urgency, which engages the wider community. Over the last few years, many UK schools have started to run their own giving days, and with the rise of digital fundraising, many are taking advantage of existing online channels to run their fundraiser in a cost-effective and engaging way. 

Cheadle Hulme School, based in the UK, ran their first giving day in October 2020. Read some of tips for how Cheadle Hulme School and others have used their ToucanTech platform to encourage donations and tell the story of their causes, and to promote their giving day using smart segmentation. 

"It was an incredibly busy week with many different elements to prepare  for the campaign, but we are really pleased with the outcome from our first Giving Day. The ToucanTech team were a real asset in the run-up ensuring everything went off without a hitch and helping us spot areas of our site that we weren’t fully utilising. It was a real success and we look forward to seeing the results continue into the coming months."

Jennifer Miller, Cheadle Hulme School

Tips for making the most of your virtual giving day

Set challenges for your donors

Using challenges such as matched funding or unlocking extra donations is a fun way to gamify your giving day, by adding competitive elements such as point scoring and leaderboards, to encourage people to get a little competitive! Cheadle Hulme School (CHS) found a generous sponsor who matched every first time donation up to £20,000, and other alumni donors set £500 to be released every time the school logged 30 donors, throughout the 24-hour period. 

Tailor your ask for different segments

Cheadle Hulme School sent out multiple emails over their 24-hour giving day, but made sure to customise their message for each potential donor. CHS segmented their database and prepared their emails in advance, using a high-impact set of campaign visuals and a clock to show the time ticking down. Different emails were scheduled for UK and US time zones to reach alumni at the best times of the day, and every email contained a clear ‘call to action’ with a donate button and incentives (such as matched gifts) to encourage people to donate.

Make the most of testimonials

Adding testimonials from your beneficiaries and using different media such as quotes, videos and photos will help to bring your cause to life and give your fundraising credibility. Cheadle Hulme School added videos from current as well as former bursary students to their fundraising page, explaining what they had gained from the experience and why they continue to donate. With new fundraising panels, ToucanTech enables comments from donors to appear on the site in real time, creating fresh content for visitors each time. 

Show your progress during the event

Using your fundraising page as a dynamic space to show donor support and share progress towards your goals. With ToucanTech, a wide range of fundraising features helps to bring your giving day landing page to life, such as countdown timers, displaying new messages of support from donors and using a progress bar to track headway towards a fund goal. 

Track your donor engagement

Once your giving day is completed, there is a great opportunity to take a look at your donor statistics and use this insight to drive your development strategy. By using ToucanTech to run fundraising campaigns and facilitate giving days, you can take advantage of the integrated payment options and log donation information directly onto donor records in the CRM, as well as view insights on previous email, postal and phone engagement, previous donations and event attendance. 

Optimising your digital spaces to run your giving day is a cost-effective and integrated approach that will help to meet your fundraising goals. Speak to a member of the team about running giving days with ToucanTech.