As the year starts to close and the year-end fundraising season approaches, you may be looking for GivingTuesday ideas that will help your organization stand out from the crowd. After all, it’s a huge day—36.1 million adults in the United States participated in 2024!
GivingTuesday is a prime opportunity to get your mission in front of a lot of new eyes and equip your loyal supporters to spread the word about your campaign. You’ll need GivingTuesday ideas that are engaging and make being generous both fun and easy to do. Here are 18 of them to help you get started.
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22 Ideas for GivingTuesday Success
If you hope to get creative and do things differently for GivingTuesday this year, you’re in good company. The data showed most nonprofits—over 8 in 10—use GivingTuesday as an opportunity to try something new.
Whether you’re planning your first GivingTuesday campaign ever or you’re eager to find fresh ideas for your tenth year, there is at least one strategy below that you can put to the test.
1. Run a Peer-to-Peer Campaign
Your supporters love your organization—let them show it! With a peer-to-peer GivingTuesday campaign, you can enable your most loyal supporters to fundraise on your behalf by tapping into their network.
Leveraging peer-to-peer fundraising for GivingTuesday starts with creating fundraising pages for each supporter, which they’ll share with people in their lives to boost your campaign’s visibility.
As your supporters spread their love for your mission among their family, friends, and colleagues, you’ll witness a multiplying effect as each person introduces your organization to their network.
2. Host a Live Virtual Fundraiser
Online events have become a reliable and highly engaging fundraising tool. Since a lot of GivingTuesday’s momentum happens online, it’s the perfect opportunity to reach audiences who are already online and in the spirit of generosity.
A virtual fundraiser for GivingTuesday provides the accessibility and convenience needed to reach supporters in real-time, regardless of their location. You can create a lot of excitement around a live event, and that energy can influence people to participate.
An online fundraising event is also perfect for illustrating your mission and impact with dynamic video and storytelling elements. You could also include interactive features like live fundraising goal tracking, Q&A sessions, guest speakers, performances, or audience interaction.
3. Plan a Themed Email Campaign
Email campaigns are a popular (and effective!) choice for GivingTuesday. But if you’re ready to kick it up a notch, try a themed email campaign.
A well-crafted, focused theme can create a compelling narrative for donors that emphasizes the specific impact their support can make. It can also resonate on a deeper emotional level than an email that simply says, in effect, “Hey! It’s GivingTuesday—here’s where to donate!”
Try segmenting your email list, too. Dividing donors into groups and sending variations of your GivingTuesday theme to each one can help you target them with the most relevant messaging, drive urgency, and successfully inspire donations.
Resource recommendation: Regardless of theme, a template can help you get a head start on writing your GivingTuesday email campaign. Check out the email templates in our GivingTuesday Resource Center!
4. Encourage Non-Financial Participation
Financial gifts are fantastic, and even the smallest contributions can help you move closer to your GivingTuesday goals.
However, to reach the broadest audience and the resources they have available, it’s important to remind people that there are non-financial ways they can support your mission—like donating in-kind goods or volunteering.
This is all the more reason to call out the various ways people can support your nonprofit besides donating money.
Build it into your campaign messaging: “This GivingTuesday, consider supporting our work by giving financially, volunteering your time, or donating goods.”
5. Enlist Social Media Advocates
Influencer marketing isn’t only for the fashion and beauty industries. There are tons of people with large online followings who would happily share your mission with their audience.
This idea will likely require some of your marketing budget and will definitely require advanced planning.
Still, you can find industry-related influencers or other individuals passionate about your cause and collaborate with them for GivingTuesday.
6. Partner with Local Businesses
Many businesses in your community are open to—or even seeking out—opportunities to give back. Reach out to a few local businesses, share your GivingTuesday fundraising goal, and ask if they’re interested in helping to reach it.
For example, if there’s a local coffee shop in your area, you could team up with them for a “Donate Your Coffee” campaign where people can donate the cost of their morning coffee to your organization.
7. Make a Big Deal About Recurring Gifts
If you’ve been meaning to get serious about asking your supporters to become recurring donors, take GivingTuesday as a chance to bring it up.
In our research for our year-end addendum to The Recurring Giving Report: Data-Backed Insights for Sustainable Generosity, we discovered that, among Neon One CRM clients, there was a 34.23% increase in recurring gifts made on GivingTuesday in 2023.
This—along with many other positive statistics—tells us that recurring giving is growing in popularity, and donors are more open than ever to setting up recurring gifts.
However you generate excitement on GivingTuesday, add a special shout about recurring gifts. Make recurring donations a unique color on your goal-tracking graphic. Include a few sentences about the importance and impact of recurring donations to your campaign emails.
When you share your fundraising progress, emphasize the number of recurring donations:
“Thank you for your generosity! We’re 60% of the way to our GivingTuesday goal. And 15% of the donations so far are recurring gifts—woohoo!”
8. Do a Matching Gift Challenge
No one wants to leave money on the table—especially when those funds could go to a good cause.
When your supporters know there’s a matching gift in the midst, and their donation could be matched to double the impact, it creates a sense of urgency and excitement. People want to mobilize and quickly raise the amount needed to maximize their gift!
To do a matching gift challenge, find an individual major donor or a group of donors willing to match donations made on GivingTuesday. Let these donors know that their support of this campaign (via sponsoring a matching gift) can create an even more significant collective impact.
One of the Sierra Club’s GivingTuesday campaigns is a great example. They emphasized the time constraint necessary to secure the matching gift: 1,000 people had to make a gift before midnight on GivingTuesday to unlock a $25,000 matching donation!
9. Target the Previous Year’s GivingTuesday Donors
When it comes to GivingTuesday and almost everything else in life, one of the best places to find support is where you’ve found support in the past.
The supporters who gave on GivingTuesday last year are likely willing to make another donation this year—it’s time to make a very special ask of them by sending targeted communications their way!
This is another time when segmenting your email list (or direct mail list or social media ad list) is super helpful. You can send personalized messages to previous GivingTuesday donors, highlighting the impact of their past support and asking for another GivingTuesday contribution.
10. Equip Your Supporters to Share Their Support
Whether you have the time and resources to pull together a peer-to-peer or matching gift campaign for GivingTuesday or not, there are plenty of other ways you can equip your most loyal supporters to spread the word.
You can take two approaches (or both of them):
- Provide resources that help your supporters share the campaign on their own channels or within their network. This could be pre-written copy for social media captions, downloadable graphics they can post online, a script template for text messages to send to friends and family, etc. You can even package this as a “GivingTuesday Toolkit” that they can download in one go to get templates, graphics, and everything else they’d need.
- Ask your supporters to provide material you can use to promote your GivingTuesday campaign. You can ask for videos of supporters voicing their support and sharing why they chose to give on GivingTuesday, for example. They may also be willing to supply quotes for your social media graphics, behind-the-scenes photos of the group they’re donating alongside, etc.
In 2023, 52% of GivingTuesday supporters said they were drawn to the idea of a bigger group of people doing good. Encourage this contagious spark of generosity by giving your supporters what they need to share their support with others or involving them in your campaign.
11. Campaign on Social Media (With a Purpose and a Goal)
On GivingTuesday, social media is the place to be. In fact, the #GivingTuesday hashtag trended number one on X in 2024! Social media has long been where many nonprofits run campaigns, get discovered, raise awareness for their cause, and hit their GivingTuesday goals.
There’s a lot of room for creativity with social media campaigns. You can post user-generated content collected from your supporters and followers, for example—request videos or photos of them holding up a sign that says something meaningful about your cause or campaign.
You can also encourage your followers to share their stories (about why they support your organization, what the mission means to them, etc.) using a special hashtag.
Resource recommendation: Use the social media templates in our GivingTuesday Resource Center to get a jumpstart on writing posts for your campaign!
12. Keep Up the Momentum with Regular Updates
If sports games are any indication, human beings love rallying around a common goal and cheering it on until it’s accomplished. To keep the energy up on GivingTuesday, share something that updates your supporters in real-time.
Consider a progress thermometer that you update every hour as you inch closer to your fundraising goal or a countdown to the end of the day. This is another opportunity to be creative and share something interactive and exciting with your supporters!
13. Gamify Your Giving
Turn GivingTuesday into a game! Create a fundraising thermometer, leaderboard, or bingo card that tracks real-time progress.
You could reward milestones (like the 10th donor, or the first gift over $100), encourage people to “unlock” impact goals, or host a drawing for participants.
Gamification creates energy and urgency, and it makes the day a lot more fun.
14. Host an Online Auction
Auctions are just plain fun. And hosting an online auction on GivingTuesday can attract a wide range of supporters—especially those who are after exclusive and otherwise desirable items or services.
First, secure those desirable items through your supporters, generous sponsors, or local businesses. Next, choose an auction platform (or use fundraising software with auction capabilities) and establish clear rules and guidelines for participating.
By hosting your auction on GivingTuesday, you’re leveraging the momentum of this exciting giving day!
15. Create a “Behind the Scenes” Video
Sometimes the best way to build trust is to pull back the curtain. Consider shooting a short, authentic “behind the scenes” video to share what’s happening on the other side of the screen.
Your video could include:
- Your staff decorating the office or prepping for GivingTuesday emails
- Volunteers packing kits, making thank-you calls, or organizing supplies
- Your Executive Director or Board Chair sharing a heartfelt message on why this day matters
- A walkthrough of your facility, programs, or GivingTuesday HQ
You don’t need a production crew—just a phone, good lighting, and a little planning. Keep it casual, friendly, and real.
Wrap up the video with a clear call to action:
“If you’ve ever wondered what goes into making all this possible—now you know. And if you’d like to be part of it, your donation today will go a long way.”
16. Go Live on Social Media
If your team doesn’t have the capacity for a full-on livestream fundraiser on GivingTuesday, use social media livestream features instead!
You can create a schedule and hop onto a social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to update your supporters and share more about your campaign.
On Facebook, live streams receive six times the number of interactions versus pre-recorded videos. If you’re an Instagram or TikTok user, you’ve likely seen the persistent in-app notifications that these platforms send to all followers when a user is live.
Peopl may miss your static feed post because of the algorithm or timing, but going live regularly on GivingTuesday is a great way to capture your followers’ attention!
16. Offer Merchandise
Whether it’s for your favorite artist’s tour or your favorite cause to support, limited edition merchandise (merch) can be a huge motivator.
Offering exclusive merchandise as a fundraiser for GivingTuesday gives your supporters a tangible way to promote your cause while contributing financially.
The options are plentiful—think things like hats, apparel, accessories, or other branded items—and the chance to secure any of these unique items can inspire urgency and excitement among your supporters.
Promote the merchandise as a GivingTuesday exclusive and tie in your campaign’s theme or your organization’s mission.
17. Celebrate Small Gifts in a Big Way
When people think of “big impact,” they often think of big checks. But small-dollar donors are the unsung heroes of GivingTuesday, and you can give them their moment in the spotlight.
Throughout the day, highlight small-dollar gifts on your social media channels, in your emails, or even on your website. Create graphics that say things like:
- “$10 = clean water for a week”
- “$7 = one literacy workbook for a student”
- “$15 = one hot meal and hygiene kit for a neighbor in need”
This strategy breaks down your organization’s impact in tangible, real-world terms—helping people visualize the direct result of their generosity.
18. Draw Attention with Text Messaging
Did you know that, on average, texts have a 98% open rate, and 90% of people will open a text message within three minutes of receipt?
They outperform emails by a landslide. While organizations and businesses must be careful not to send too many text messages, it’s important to consider how texts can play into your fundraising strategy.
Before GivingTuesday, look into your nonprofit CRM’s texting capabilities. You may be able to use texts to announce your GivingTuesday campaign or collect donations!
19. Plan a Data-Informed Campaign
When you’re trying to come up with GivingTuesday ideas that will inspire people to be generous, take a look at what worked last year. Did one email generate more clicks to your donation form than others? Did any of your social media posts elicit more engagement than the rest?
What do last year’s GivingTuesday communications tell you about what moves your supporters to donate? Pay attention to what donors responded to in previous years and let that insight inform your campaign.
20. Partner with a Local Business
GivingTuesday is the perfect opportunity to tap into your local community—and that includes small businesses who want to do good and gain visibility.
Reach out to a few businesses ahead of time—cafés, bookstores, pet groomers, etc.—and propose a collaboration like the business donating a percentage of sales made on GivingTuesday to your nonprofit.
In return, you’ll promote the business to your audience through emails, social posts, and maybe even a short interview or feature story.
These partnerships build long-term goodwill, and they can often lay the groundwork for future sponsorships, event support, or corporate donations down the line.
21. Do a GivingTuesday Takeover
A “takeover” isn’t as aggressive as it might sound—it’s simply when you have someone take over your nonprofit’s social media accounts for the day.
As part of your GivingTuesday campaign, a social media takeover by a well-known supporter, community member, influencer, staff member, or passionate volunteer can attract new followers from that person’s network and add authenticity as they share their support and personal stories.
It can also generate excitement and increase visibility through cross-promotion on the takeover host’s own channels, amplifying the reach and impact of your GivingTuesday campaign.
22. Create a “Countdown to Impact” Campaign
Want to build GivingTuesday momentum before the big day? Launch a three-day ( or five-day, or seven-day) “Countdown to Impact” series on social media or via email.
Each day, share a real impact story tied to a GivingTuesday goal:
- Day 1: Meet James, a student in our program.
- Day 2: See what $50 did last year.
- Day 3: Tour the new classroom.
Each post builds anticipation—so when GivingTuesday arrives, supporters are primed and ready to give.
Get Resources to Power Your GivingTuesday Ideas
Did this article spark ideas on how you can engage your community and gain more supporters this GivingTuesday? We’ve got even more resources to guide you!
Visit our GivingTuesday Resource Center for everything you need: planning worksheets, social media templates, email templates (including for monthly giving), blog posts, webinars with industry experts, and other tools to help you create your most successful GivingTuesday campaign yet.
