How to plan your calendar for Giving Season

GivingTuesday – the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States – is a global generosity movement and day of giving. By participating in GivingTuesday and Giving Season, your organisation may be able to boost its fundraising efforts as nearly a third of all giving takes place in December¹.

This year, GivingTuesday falls on 30 November. To help you gear up for this important day and extend your fundraising efforts into the remainder of the Giving Season, we have outlined a recommended 2021 planning calendar. This calendar can serve as a guide as your organisation prepares for, finalises and launches its Giving Season fundraising campaign.

11-21 October:

• Review Facebook's materials on fundraising, ads and content strategy.
• Sign up for Facebook fundraising tools. The application process can take up to three weeks so make sure that you give yourself plenty of time. Learn more about onboarding to Facebook fundraising tools on our blog.
• Determine your end-of-year fundraising goals and theme.
• Assemble your Giving Season team and assign roles to your members (e.g. allocate people to ads, content, graphics).

21-31 October:

• Prepare your fundraising assets by following our five creative considerations for cause-driven ideas.
• You may consider running ads including on-Facebook donation ads to help garner more donations.

1-5 November:

• Download this template to create a content calendar and plan your content.
• Start promoting your goals and intentions for #GivingSeason (3 posts/week).
• Create your GivingTuesday Facebook Page, Instagram or group fundraisers.
  • Tip: Add the donate button to your Facebook Page and on Instagram.
• Encourage your supporters to create a fundraiser on your organisation's behalf.

15-29 November:

• Post your GivingTuesday content to remind supporters about your fundraiser.
• Highlight stories from your organisation's impactful work in photos, infographics or videos.

30 November: #GivingTuesday

• Highlight and acknowledge your supporters' fundraisers by posting them to your Page.
• Post fundraising updates and milestones throughout the day.
• Interact with your supporters by liking and commenting on donations on your Facebook Page and your supporters' fundraising pages.
• Schedule a Live video to talk to your supporters and fundraise via the Live donate button.

December:

• Nurture your relationships by thanking your #GivingTuesday donors.
• Encourage supporters, board members and volunteers to use Facebook Fundraisers on your behalf.
• Keep the end-of-year fundraising efforts up by continuing to share success stories, increasing your fundraising goal and providing compelling reasons for people to give.
• Schedule your posts but make sure that you have someone to moderate comments and respond to supporters.
• Continue to advertise by leveraging the new on-Facebook donation ads.
• Continue to thank and celebrate your community and individual donors.

For more resources, visit our Charity best practices page. For more information on Facebook fundraising tools and eligibility, see our previous blog post here. Time to get those calendars ready for some Giving Season fundraising fun!

¹Network for Good, "What You Need to Know About Giving Season", 2021