How and Why Businesses Should Participate in Giving Tuesday with Non-Profits

Your non-profit requires a master plan for creating, posting, and evaluating its social media content.
This plan is known as a social media strategy.

A proper and comprehensive social media strategy includes the guidelines for social media content, frequency of posting, engagement strategies, marketing campaigns, and so on.

Consider the following guidelines to create a social media strategy that works for your non-profit.

Why Should Your Business Participate in Giving Tuesday?

Giving Tuesday offers an opportunity to reach a wider audience. It happens every year on the Tuesday following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Although the date varies, people who are interested in altruistic giving pay attention to which brands participate.

The day gives your brand a chance to stand out from the competition and show how much you care. You’ll reach new customers and any organization you team up with may reach new donors via your customer base.

What Do Businesses Do for Giving Tuesday?

What Giving Tuesday looks like for a company varies widely. There are any number of ways you can get involved and ramp up your philanthropic efforts. Here are our favorite options.

1. Throw a Hybrid Fundraiser

The pandemic changed the way companies plan fundraisers. Not everyone feels comfortable with an in-person event, while others shy away from the virtual ones. Throwing a hybrid fundraiser lets you please both sides.

During the height of the pandemic, around 62% of companies switched to a virtual event and about 70% of them described it as successful. As the world moved into 2021, events became hybrids, with a limited number of tickets available for an in-person event and the rest of the attendees taking part in an online version. A hybrid fundraiser lets you sell high-level tickets to your top donors but still attract others who might want to give smaller amounts.

2. Donate Time and Resources

Perhaps Giving Tuesday becomes a tradition in your company where workers are allowed to take the day and work at a local nonprofit of their choice. Other brands might have workers sign up to work on a project to improve the community.

Another idea is to run a canned food drive where workers and employees bring in items leading up to the day.

3. Use Hashtags

All over the country, people will participate in Giving Tuesday and use the hashtag #givingtuesday to show off what they’ve accomplished. Your business can gain some positive exposure and you can also help expand the reach of any organization you give to by posting on social media and using the hashtag.

Encourage your workers to post, tell your customers about your efforts, and expand your reach as much as possible. Your clients who care about the day will pay particular attention to your efforts.

4. Tweak Your Website

The main purpose of a website is to raise awareness about your company. When you participate in Giving Tuesday, you should announce your efforts on your website. Get your customers involved by asking them to donate their time or money and tag you in their efforts.

You can either adopt a specific cause, such as trying to help raise funds for a local animal shelter, or you can simply encourage any type of giving and brag on your customers for how big-hearted they are.

5. Tell a Story

People love a feel-good story. What can you tap into for Giving Tuesday that highlights what you do in your industry? For example, if you run a heating and cooling business, you might locate a needy senior whose furnace or AC has gone out, raise funds, replace the system, and showcase the entire effort on your website and social media.

Your local community will feel invested in the story as they follow along and see how happy the senior is with the gift and what a difference your brand made. You don’t have to change the world, but you can change the world for a few people and create a lot of positive press in the process.

While you should never do something generous merely for the publicity, it’s okay to let your work shine forth and tell a story about your brand. Just make sure you’re authentic in your reasons for wanting to help others, or it can come off as bragging rather than helpful.

6. Offer a Portion of Sales

Another way to increase your reach while also helping others is to give away a portion of your profits on Giving Tuesday. Choose a worthy charity aligned with your company values and let your customers and the followers of the organization know you’ll be giving a percentage of sales to the nonprofit for the day.

You’ve likely seen similar fundraising efforts at local restaurants. A Boy Scout troop might ask all their members to eat at a dining establishment on a certain day and the organization gets 10% of all sales, for example.

Any type of business can run a similar campaign on Giving Tuesday and donate money to the charity of their choice. If you run a clothing store, you might donate to a local homeless shelter so they can buy coats for people in need, for example.

How Do You Stand Out on Giving Tuesday?

The day will be filled with people giving to various charities. How can your business make an impact in a sea of other efforts? Start by figuring out what your passion is and who you truly want to help. The more invested you are, the more likely it is you’ll come up with creative ways to drive attention to your efforts.