How to plan your giving season calendar

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 organization may be able to boost its fundraising efforts as nearly a third of all giving takes place in December¹.

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 suggested planning calendar. This calendar can serve as a guide as your organization prepares for, finalizes and launches its giving season fundraising campaign.

Eight weeks out:

• Sign up for Meta Fundraising Tools. Nonprofits in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia can fundraise on your own website, on Facebook and Instagram (with donations processed by PayPal Giving Fund), or both. Nonprofits in many other countries are also eligible to use Meta tools to fundraise on your own website. Learn more here.
• Determine your end-of-year fundraising goal(s) and theme.
• Assemble your giving season team and assign roles to your members (for example allocate people to ads, content, graphics, etc.).
• Prepare your fundraising assets by following our five creative considerations for cause-driven ideas.

One month out:

• 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 organization’s behalf.

Week of:

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

GivingTuesday: #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.

After GivingTuesday:

• Nurture your relationships by thanking your 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 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 Nonprofit Best Practices page.