giveBIG St. Croix Valley is a Wisconsin-based giving event that has been hosted on the Mightycause platform since 2013. In its fifth year, the event moved from the Osceola Community Health Foundation to United Way of St. Croix Valley, which allowed the event to incorporate additional communities.
Having raised $277,490 during this year’s event, giveBIG St. Croix Valley has raised over $1,000,000 for nonprofits in Wisconsin’s St. Croix Valley since its inception in 2013.
About the giving day
giveBIG St. Croix Valley was a 24-hour event, beginning at 12 a.m. CST on April 24, 2018. During the giving event, 73 nonprofits from the St. Croix Valley worked to drive traffic to their Mightycause pages.
The event had two leaderboards. The nonprofits competed to top the Most Dollars Raised and Most Unique Donors leaderboards, with a cash prize available for the top seven nonprofits for the Most Unique Donors leaderboard.
There were two randomly-pulled Golden Tickets every hour during the event, meaning that any organization who received a donation during any given hour had the opportunity to win a $100 cash prize.
The lead-up
Before the event, United Way St. Croix’s Jessica Neumann worked to promote the event to nonprofits. Many nonprofits were new to giveBIG St. Croix Valley since the switch to United Way St. Croix Valley enabled her to invite nonprofits in more counties to the event, so training was key.
Mightycause hosted two webinars for giveBIG St. Croix Valley participants — one was an introduction to the giving day and the Mightycause platform, and the other was focused on strategy. United Way St. Croix Valley also worked to prepare a Nonprofit Toolkit to make sure all participants were prepared for success on April 24th.
Early donations
Donations for giveBIG St. Croix Valley opened on March 1st, giving the nonprofits plenty of time to get a head start in promoting their event.
Media engagement
Alongside resources for nonprofits, United Way of St. Croix Valley also prepared resources for the media. Ms. Neumann and the United Way worked to secure media coverage for the event, conducting outreach to local media, such as radio stations and newspapers.
The media toolkit contained the press release about the event, logos, links to social media accounts, as well as a contact at United Way St. Croix Valley.
Engaging sponsors
Sponsors were an integral part of giveBIG St. Croix Valley. During the lead-up to the event, Ms. Neumann at United Way St. Croix Valley worked to create a Sponsorship Toolkit. The toolkit contained a fact sheet and timeline for businesses, as well as sample company emails.
United Way of St. Croix Valley managed to secure nearly $9,000 in prizes for giveBIG.
Platform updates made preparing for the giving event easy
Mightycause released a series of updates to our giving event platform shortly before giveBIG St. Croix Valley’s site launched. These updates included:
- Live on-page editing
- A new dashboard that made it easy to switch between pre-event, live, and post-event sites
- A larger, more striking banner image
- A new tool to track and approve pending offline donations entered by participating nonprofits
- A new tool to track participants that allows event organizers to see how many participants had fully filled out their pages, how many donors each organization had, their fundraising totals, the number of peer-to-peer fundraisers created and how much they had entered in matching grants
- The ability to add and customize content pages
These updates were rolled out as the next phase of larger giving event platform update that began in 2017. The first update last year introduced newly redesigned, searchable leaderboards that feature the nonprofits’ logos, Golden Ticket and Power Hour tables that include logos as well, and a mobile-friendly design that ensures users can view the event and donate easily from all devices. The Mightycause team also added real-time updates, eliminating the need to refresh the webpage to see an updated total.
The giving event
Starting at midnight, the nonprofits participating in giveBIG St. Croix Valley used the tips the learned from the Nonprofit Toolkit and trainings to hit the ground running!
24-hour customer support
Mightycause provided customer support for all donors and nonprofits participating in giveBIG St. Croix Valley throughout the duration of the event. Giving events can be chaotic, exciting and even a little nerve-wracking for nonprofits, so it’s important that help is only a phone call or email away. (Even in the overnight hours!)
Competing for the most donors
Wisconsin’s St. Croix Valley is a rural area, where internet access can be spotty for some residents. For that reason, offline donations (that is, cash or check) had been a huge part of this giving event in the past. To help nonprofits move more donations online, United Way of St. Croix Valley made having the highest number of online donors the goal of all the nonprofits by offering prizes to the seven organization who brought in the most donors.
The tactic worked. giveBIG St. Croix Valley saw almost 30% growth in online donations in 2018.
The results
In just 24 hours, giveBIG St. Croix Valley raised $277,490 total!
The biggest growth for giveBIG St. Croix Valley in 2018 was the number of online donations. Even in its fifth year, a time where many giving events can experience some attrition, they saw 29.5% growth in the amount of donations made online through the giving event site. They also saw 92% of donors opt to cover platform fees for the nonprofits they supported, meaning all of the participating nonprofits got to take home more money for their causes.
Nonprofits actively secured matching grants — over $40,000 were matched by grantors during giveBIG St. Croix Valley.
The event was a major success for United Way St. Croix Valley and the participating nonprofits. And in 2019, they plan to incorporate even more communities, making the event even bigger in its sixth year!
Learn more about giving events on Mightycause
Interested in hosting your own giving event on Mightycause? Learn more, download the Giving Day Playbook, and contact us!