Black Friday. Cyber Monday. The holidays are full of excuses to open our wallets and support our economy by purchasing furry Santa hats. But for the last six years, we also have another day. It’s a day that turns our culture of holiday consumerism on its head and focuses our attention on giving back to important causes. Every year, generates millions of dollars for nonprofit organizations providing essential services that care for people in need and bring about progress in our world. Cue: heart melting. #GivingTuesday
And yet, any person who works at a nonprofit will tell you, #GivingTuesday is not all flowers and rainbows. The massive growth of the movement (2016 was the biggest year in #GivingTuesday history, bringing in $168 million from 1.56 million donors according to the 92Y Data Project), means that everyone who’s anyone in the nonprofit sector participates, over-saturating our inboxes with donation requests and making it nearly impossible for nonprofits to win our attention. By the end of Tuesday, our donation fatigue is real.
Participating in #GivingTuesday is a bit like advertising in Times Square. It’s big, shiny, and competitive. In order to succeed on #GivingTuesday, organizations need a knockout strategy — something creative and captivating that can break through the crowd.
This year, UJA-Federation of New York took the concept of #GivingTuesday and delivered that knockout campaign. Instead of asking for money, they asked people to give back with their time.
For 100 years, UJA has shaped New York by funding the many institutions that make up Jewish life in the city and the world. And now UJA is offering new ways for people to get involved with their work through volunteering. They launched a new platform, , that connects New Yorkers with meaningful ways to take action on the causes they care about. And what better way to celebrate the new volunteer program than on #GivingTuesday, the holiday for giving.Time for Good
This #GivingTuesday UJA ran a social and email campaign that calls on our passionate, no-nonsense ethic as New Yorkers to not just get emotional about the needs of the community, but to get stuff done.
The campaign brought nearly 700 users to the Time For Good platform and it didn’t just get users to the website, it inspired them to volunteer. The campaign converted a generous 30% of users to sign up for a volunteer activity. That’s 30% of users who created a profile, browsed through different opportunities, signed up, and made a commitment to show up and volunteer. In the marketing world, we call that a high barrier to entry. Normally we run away from high-barrier asks like there’s no tomorrow. But UJA tapped into something new here — they realized people want more out of their giving experiences, that we want to see and feel our impact.
Our takeaway at Purpose: people are looking for new ways to get involved with #GivingTuesday outside of opening their wallets. The UJA-Federation campaign left our team with renewed optimism. While donation fatigue is real, people still want to give back, and for those of us involved in the nonprofit sector, it’s time we get creative and find meaningful ways for people to get involved in our work. Because this big, shiny, competitive #GivingTuesday is here to stay.
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