The holiday season is nearly here. It’s an exciting time to get together with friends and family, eat delicious food, and give to those in need.
Nonprofit organizations trying to raise money can tap into that giving spirit and encourage people to donate to their causes. That’s what Giving Tuesday is all about.
To participate in Giving Tuesday, people need to know about your organization and fundraising efforts. Sending fundraising emails is one of the best ways to spread the word. Use these Giving Tuesday email examples to inspire your own holiday giving email campaigns.
Giving Tuesday 2024
After Thanksgiving, the holiday season is in full swing. There are several holiday-themed days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and finally, Giving Tuesday directly following Thanksgiving.
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about buying items, Giving Tuesday focuses on generosity and contributing to worthy causes. The holiday encourages people to donate their time or money to charity. In 2024, Giving Tuesday will be on December 3.
Nonprofit organizations may create targeted fundraising efforts on Giving Tuesday to maximize holiday giving. They focus their fundraising, including email marketing efforts, on that day when people may be more inclined to make donations.
Requesting donations for your organization
Charities are always looking for effective ways to get more people to donate. Requesting donations is a lot like marketing a traditional business — you have to choose the best marketing channels.
Some of the marketing channels nonprofits use are:
- Email marketing
- Events marketing
- Print marketing
- Social media marketing
- Website and SEO marketing
Many nonprofits leverage several of these channels to drive donations. However, with limited marketing budgets, you need to decide which channels will offer the best return on your investment.
Why email is the best channel for nonprofits
Email is often the best option for nonprofits trying to generate more donations.
With email marketing, you have complete control of your own list of subscribers. In traditional marketing and even something like social media marketing, other companies control who sees your messages. Those companies could change their policies or disappear tomorrow. If you focused all your efforts on Instagram marketing and Instagram deleted your account, for example, you’d have to start over from scratch. By contrast, your email list is something you own independently.
You also have total design control in your marketing emails. You can make your messages as long or as short as you want them without interference from another party. Devote all the real estate you want to your organization’s mission, goals, and how readers can support you.
Then, direct readers to your donation page with a clickable button. It will be incredibly easy for interested donors to reach your page and donate.
Nonprofits are often trying to use their funds more effectively, and email marketing delivers a very high return on investment compared to other channels. It’s simply the best channel for your Giving Tuesday efforts.
What makes a great donor email?
Asking for donations can be tricky, especially online. If you’re making requests for donations over email, you need to get every aspect of your donor emails right.
Consider these components of great donor emails as you prepare for Giving Tuesday.
Add a personalized greeting
Instead of a generic greeting like “hi” or “hello donor,” try personalizing the message with the recipient’s name or title. Personalizing the greeting can help your donor emails stand out among the many emails your potential donors receive. It will seem like you’re speaking directly to each person rather than treating them all like numbers.
You don’t have to type in each recipient’s name individually — that would be incredibly time-consuming. Instead, use email marketing software like Constant Contact to insert a greeting tag in your message. The software will automatically add each contact’s information, like their first name, based on your selections.
Showcase your impact
Donors want to choose the best causes for their money. They can’t give to every nonprofit that requests donations, so you need to make sure your organization stands out. One way to do that is to highlight your organization’s impact.
What good things are you doing for your community or the world? How does your organization make a difference? These are the types of questions donors want answered before choosing charities to support. Great email examples by nonprofits address these topics while requesting donations.
If possible, share testimonials from the people or other organizations you support. Testimonials from people your nonprofit directly impacts are very convincing to potential donors. Ask the people you support to provide testimonials and get their permission to use those quotes in your donor emails. You can add them as text or embedded videos if the participants are willing to record and share their responses.
Share statistics about how you use donation money
Along the same lines, it’s always a good idea to share statistics about how your organization uses the money you receive. With so many charity scams and disreputable organizations, donors are afraid of charities misusing their donations. If you tell them exactly what you plan to do with the money or how you used donations in the past, they’ll feel more confident donating to your organization.
Add statistics to your Giving Tuesday emails about what happened when your nonprofit participated last year. If this is your first time participating in Giving Tuesday, share how you will use this year’s donations.
People love to see clear, straightforward numbers. Highlight the most important statistics with bold text or design in your email so no one will miss them. Just don’t overwhelm the readers with too many numbers, or your email will lose their attention.
Add supporting images and video
All the best Giving Tuesday email campaign examples have great copywriting, but they also go beyond just words. Nonprofit email marketing best practices include adding visual elements like images and videos to your messages when appropriate. After all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?
Consider which images or videos would complement the message in your donor email. For example, you could use an image of the people your organization helps, photos of your team, or videos about your cause.
Integrate these visual elements into your email design. You should probably stick to just one video per email, but you can use multiple images as long as they don’t distract from the message. Any visual elements you add should be high-quality and optimized to load properly on mobile devices. Most email reads now come from mobile devices, so you have to make sure your email design is mobile-friendly.
Include a strong CTA
Getting donors to share their email addresses with you is the first hurdle of nonprofit email marketing. Then, you need to convince them to actually open your message. If they open and read your email, your next objective is getting them to engage with it. That’s what your call to action is for.
Your call to action (CTA) tells readers what you want them to do next. In Giving Tuesday emails, that’s typically donating to the nonprofit organization sending the email.
Experiment with different wording and design for your CTA. Include a strong action verb like “donate,” “partner,” or “support.” Make sure your CTA button stands out from the rest of your message so it’s very easy to find. When readers click the button, it should take them directly to a page on your website where they can do what the CTA says.
3 Nonprofit Giving Tuesday email examples
Creating effective Giving Tuesday emails can be challenging, especially when just starting. Use these examples for inspiration.
The YMCA
This Giving Tuesday email from the YMCA is short and sweet yet still packs a big punch. Including a quote from a mother, Keonia, who directly benefited from the organization’s programs, makes the message stand out. It tugs on the reader’s heartstrings and helps them understand the YMCA’s impact on real people.
The YMCA makes this message even more impactful by adding pictures of Keonia’s son, Marion, participating in YMCA programs. The three bright and colorful pictures deepen the connection between the reader and the YMCA. It’s easy to see how someone reading this email would want to support the organization by making a donation.
North Shore Animal League
Who can resist a picture of adorable little puppies? The North Shore Animal League uses two images to great effect in this Giving Tuesday email. The animal pictures draw people in and make them more likely to engage with the message’s content.
Including a countdown at the top of the email for the donation match also helps create a sense of urgency, prompting readers to take action right away. If they want to maximize their impact, they have to “double their gift” by donating before the countdown expires. Finally, the progress bar at the bottom of the email gives donors a clear, immediate goal to work towards. They may be more inclined to donate when they know it will move that bar closer to the finish line.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Much like the YMCA email, this Giving Tuesday donor email from St. Jude focuses on one person’s story. The email highlights Hadley, a St. Jude patient, to show how the hospital makes a difference in people’s lives.
St. Jude embedded a video directly in the email, which is very effective for this kind of message. Seeing and hearing from patients in the video will forge a deeper connection between St. Jude and the email recipients than text alone. The blue “Donate now” CTA button stands out from the rest of the message so people know exactly where to click to donate.
Segmentation and automation tools for Giving Tuesday
Creating a Giving Tuesday email campaign can be very time-consuming, from designing and writing your emails to monitoring your results. Using segmentation and automation tools will help. So how do they work?
Automation tools handle repetitive email marketing tasks for you so you can focus on connecting with donors and keeping your organization running. Segmentation tools help you break down your email list into smaller groups of donors based on shared characteristics. From there, you can create more targeted email campaigns that address those group’s needs and preferences.
Constant Contact includes email segmenting and automation tools to help simplify your Giving Tuesday email campaigns. Constant Contact has ready-made Giving Tuesday email templates you can customize to fit your organization’s message. All you have to do is fill in the text and drag and drop elements like images or video where you want them.
Constant Contact will also help automate your campaigns so your contacts get messages according to how they engage with your organization. For example, you can set up an automation so every new email subscriber receives a series of welcome emails. You just have to create the automations once, then let the software do the heavy lifting.
Start a free trial of Constant Contact today to see how you can upgrade your Giving Tuesday email campaigns.
Don’t miss out on Giving Tuesday donations
Launching your own Giving Tuesday email campaigns is the best way to participate in the holiday and drive donations for your organization. Try to incorporate testimonials from the people you help, statistics about how you use donations, and strong CTAs for the best donation rates. Use email marketing tools like Constant Contact to make your campaigns even stronger. You’ll save time and generate more donations.
Next, download Constant Contact’s free Year-End marketing checklist for Nonprofits.
