If your nonprofit is ready to join the GivingTuesday movement, here comes the fun stuff: personalizing your campaign and making it your own.
The great thing about GivingTuesday is that it’s an “unbranded movement”—you have the flexibility to make it whatever you want. You can use your organization’s branding to create custom GivingTuesday social media graphics and hashtags that are consistent with your existing branding and marketing outreach.
Here are some tips for personalizing your GivingTuesday campaign.
Before you dive into branding, you’ll need a strategy for your campaign. If you have already brainstormed your campaign theme and messaging, there are useful resources to help you along including a Toolkit and Workbook developed by GivingTuesday and a GivingTuesday Brand Guide and Worksheet that I’ve created. You’ll find prompts for developing your campaign name, visuals, tagline, narrative, and call to action.
A brand guide visually expresses the important aspects of your branding. It functions as a reference guide to keep your visuals and messaging consistent throughout your campaign.
Your brand guide can be simple but should include the visual aspects of your branding, i.e. logo, colors, fonts, images, and videos—as well as your voice, and the theme and hashtags you plan to use in your GivingTuesday campaign.
When you design a campaign social media post or website graphic, reference your brand guide to be sure it’s aligned with your branding and messaging.
Need help getting started on your brand guide? Here is a Social Media Canva Template you can download and personalize for your own campaign.
TIP: When designing a piece, ask yourself: Will a follower recognize this as part of my brand? If not, revisit your design (and brand guide) to make it more consistent with your brand’s identity.
While you want to use your organization’s branding, it’s also smart to incorporate aspects of GivingTuesday’s branding so that your audience recognizes your campaign is part of this global movement.
If you don’t have a graphic designer on hand, tools like Canva or Adobe Express (both of which offer nonprofit discounts) make it easy to create images using the GivingTuesday branding and logo.
TIP: The GivingTuesday hex color codes are #C02032 (red) and #32417E (blue).
Creating a hashtag unique to your campaign is one of the best ways to increase your engagement. You can use your organization’s name, tagline, or campaign name—just keep it simple and memorable.
You can also play on your organization’s mission like Dress for Success did. The organization—whose mission is to empower women to achieve economic independence by providing, among other things, professional attire—played on the GivingTuesday name by staging a GivingShoesDay where women were encouraged to donate their gently worn professional shoes.
9.7 million people volunteered for GivingTuesday 2021—up 38% from 2020.
GivingTuesday Impact Report 2021
Consistent branding helps reinforce the who, what, and why of your organization—and creates a connection with your audience. It also helps with donor retention.
Using a brand guide, as well as a content calendar, will help to create visual and messaging consistency that will inspire viewers to take action during your GivingTuesday campaign—and throughout the year.
During GivingTuesday people may feel overwhelmed by fundraising appeals. To stand out and resonate with your audience, you need to tell your story.
A compelling story allows potential donors and supporters to make an emotional connection. And video allows you to express situations in a way that static text and images can’t.
Videos are shared over social media 1200% more than text and pictures combined. If that doesn’t convince you, video viewers retain as much as 95% of a message when they watch it—text viewers only retain 10% of what they read.
With your plan, brand guide, and story in hand, you are well on your way to creating a GivingTuesday campaign that will stand out—and create lasting connections with donors and supporters.
Make your next campaign stand out! Get my free GivingTuesday Branding Guide & Worksheet that includes tips, worksheets and templates.
