After three years on a different platform, the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay moved its spring giving event, Give Day Tampa Bay, to Mightycause in 2017. In its second year on the platform on May 1, 2018, Give Day raised more than $1.76 million and over 9,600 donations from 8,249 donors.
The team set an ambitious goal of engaging more nonprofits than in previous years for their 2018 event. After brainstorming, the Give Day team chose to focus on using matching grant prizes from their sponsors to increase participation during the 24-hour event. Studies show that telling donor about a matching grant can increase the likelihood to secure donations from donors by more than 50%, and can increase average gift size by nearly 70%, making it a crucial tool to increasing engagement for a giving event.
Sponsors Make Giving Event Successes
The key to any successful giving event is to secure great sponsors that are invested in the community and care about the mission of the event. Plus, it helps to be able to incentivize nonprofits with great prizes to encourage their to participate.
Give Day Tampa Bay secured top-notch sponsors that supported their goals of engaging nonprofits through matching grants. Their Premier Sponsor offered a matching grant to a prize pool of the first 50 nonprofits to raise $500 online and $500 in matching grants. From the pool of 50 nonprofits, 30 were randomly selected to win the prize, ensuring a fair shot for small and large nonprofits.
This prize encouraged nonprofits to not only secure a matching grant for their event (ensuring they would motivate donors to raise at least donate what was raised in matching funds) but also forced strategic planning from participants that may otherwise not take the time to plot out their participation in the event.
Providing Sponsor Branding Opportunities
In return for their sponsorship, organizations were offered prominent logo placement on the Give Day website and across participant pages. Mightycause and the Community Foundation worked together to customize a tax receipt to highlight the host and premier sponsor of the event, too. Plus, the sponsor section in Mightycause’s template allowed the team to add new sponsors immediately into a plug and play template without waiting for the development team.
Customizing a Matching Grant Prize Pool
The key component to tie Give Day together was the matching grant prize pool. Every hour the pool was updated to reflect the most up-to-date numbers of which nonprofits were eligible to win the randomly selected $1,000 prize. Mightycause helped bring the vision to life by creating a real-time Results page and custom section on the page to draw the focus to this key prize.
The matching grant piece of the event was successful, with more than $272,000 raised in matching grants. The prize pool capped at 50 nonprofits at about 6 p.m., and the prize was drawn at 9 p.m. EST.
The team also had two category sponsors–one for Animal-related nonprofits and one for Arts-related nonprofits. For Arts-focused nonprofits, the sponsor offered a $200 match to any small nonprofits (annual operating budget of less than $250,000) that raised at least $200 during the event.
Proof of Their Success
More than 85% of registered nonprofits actively participated in the event, the highest activation number ever achieved for Give Day Tampa Bay. Of those, 22% had at least one donation made towards a matching grant on their Mightycause page.
The event also achieved any giving event’s ultimate goal: shining light on worthy nonprofits in their community and acquiring new donors. Give Day Tampa Bay brought in more than 6,000 new donors for the community and for worthy nonprofits in the Tampa Bay area.