Planning a giving event doesn’t have to be overwhelming! While there’s lots to do, planning your giving event with a timeline of key phases will help you stay on track so you know when to focus on certain items.
There are several dates and milestones to consider as you get ready for your event, from building your homepage phases to registration setup and more. We’ve created 6 phases to help you plan your giving event timeline, plus we’ve included a sample timeline to get you started.
Pro-tip: Host your giving event with Mightycause and your dedicated project manager will walk you through each of the below steps in sequence to set your campaign up for success!
Preliminary Check-In
The preliminary check-in is geared towards getting ready for this year’s event by pre-planning, meeting with your team, and setting goals for your event.
If you’re new to giving events you’ll want to review some materials to help get your bearings. Check out this helpful e-book as a starting point. Take time to reflect on goals and expectations for this first year. Why are you hosting a giving event? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you have a dollars raised goal, unique donor goal, participation goal, or community partnership goals?
If you’ve previously hosted a giving event, it’s time to review your notes from last year and set your goals for this year. What worked? What didn’t work that you might want to change this year? Review your notes and write down your thoughts before getting started. Taking note of what worked and didn’t work before getting started will help keep you on target and show you where to direct your energy this year.
This preliminary phase can take a couple days or longer depending on the scale of your event, how large your hosting organization is and how many people are involved on your team. Take the time to meet as a group before starting phase 1.
Phase 1 – Initial Set Up
Phase 1 is geared towards the initial set up of your event site and preparing any necessary materials you’ll include on the site. This includes setting up a timeline with milestones in your platform dashboard, building out your pre-site homepage and customizing subpages, creating any documentation or materials you plan to provide in nonprofit toolkits, etc. If you will be offering trainings, be sure to schedule these so organizations can register, that way there are actionable items for participants to take after your pre-site is launched.
Your pre-site is geared toward providing information about the upcoming event. It typically includes timelines, FAQs, an about section, a nonprofit toolkit, fundraising toolkit, any media toolkits and partnership or sponsorship information. You’ll want to take some time to build out (or refresh) the information on each of these subpages in your Pages editing dashboard. Review all information to make sure everything is up to date.
Pro Tip! With the Mightycause Pages editor you can duplicate your current site pages and make edits to the duplicates so you don’t have to worry about live editing. You can then schedule your duplicate page so it automatically publishes, replacing the current subpages at the specific date and time you select.
Plan to allow at minimum 2 weeks for Phase 1. Depending on the scale of your event it could take more or less time, but you’ll want to allow yourself space to both build and do some quality assurance testing (ie clicking around, making sure all links and buttons work, etc.) prior to launch.
Phase 2 – Registration Build
Not all giving events need or use registration. You can decide if registration is right for you. Take a look at this blog post to help determine if registration is right for you. If you do plan to use registration, you will need to build your registration form and update registration settings during this phase.
Consider when you plan to open and close your registration form. Will you have a soft close date (ie public close date) and a hard close date (internal cutoff date for your team) Does your registration form require a registration fee? Mightycause offers hosts the ability to collect a registration fee directly through their Stripe account. In addition, automatic registration emails can be customized to save you the task of notifying each organization individually after a registration is approved.
Plan to allow at least one week for building out your registration form, updating your registration settings, and testing your registration form.
Phase 3 – Settings Review
Phase 3 is focused on reviewing the additional settings and needs for your giving event. Spend time finalizing prizes, building out your live event schedule, connecting with potential sponsors, preparing your pre, live, and post event communications for nonprofits and donors, and reviewing your event settings. You’ll also want to think through your marketing strategy and outlets for spreading the word.
One key element to review in this phase will be your offline donation process. Does your event allow offline gifts? Do they count towards prizes? Who will be responsible for reviewing and approving offline gifts or will they be automatically approved? You’ll also use this time to host any webinars or training sessions for your participants. Review any upcoming reporting needs. What reports and data will you need post event to help wrap up your giving day?
During this phase you can also pull participant lists from last year and plan outreach to organizations not yet registered for this year’s event to help reach any registration goals you may have set during Phase 1.
Continue reaching out for sponsorships, and consider promoting group giving pages to deepen engagement with local businesses. Send save the dates to donors and nonprofits.
Phase 3 is often the longest phase. Most giving events take at least 3 months (or more) to work through the items in Phase 3.
Phase 4 – Final Preparations
Phase 4 focuses on getting your early giving, live, and post sites ready for launch, along with final preparations before giving opens. Early giving kicks off during this phase with the giving event fast approaching!
Build your early giving, live and post site homepages (and any other phases you need!) Will you be using leaderboards? If so, how many leaderboards will you have and how do you prefer to organize them? Do you want them all on your homepage or will some be on a subpage? Take time to build your automatic prizes (ie hourly golden tickets or timed power hours, etc.) on the backend.
Make a couple test donations on your platform to review receipt language and your donation form before giving opens.
If your event has an early giving period, be sure to make yourself an early giving checklist – review all your final marketing needs, outreach plans for organizations and donors, and any outstanding sponsorship needs. Host a team meeting. Make sure everyone knows their assigned tasks for both early giving and the live event. Are you hosting an in-person kick-off or live component for the giving day? Finalize those plans!
A week before your live event, go through a final giving event checklist to make sure all tasks from your prior phases are completed. Take time to do a final review of your live and post sites and click links to test for quality assurance.
Plan to allow at least a couple weeks for Phase 4.
Phase 5 – Giving Day Launch
Phase 5 is all about the live event! You made it, the day is here – and things are busy!
Some events are 24 hours and others are a week or more. Depending on your event, take the time to post to social media periodically, and send emails with nonprofits to boost morale and help keep up the event’s momentum. Post about your totals raised, thank your donors who have given so far, and announce prize winners to keep supporters excited.
Phase 5 can be a day or more depending on the length of your live event.
Phase 6 – Post-Event
Phase 6 focuses on the post event wrap-up. You’ve made it through the giving day and it’s time to wrap things up! 😎
Add in post-event prize winners if needed. Work on any final reconciliation of totals and post event reporting and congratulate participants and donors for being a part of this year’s event. Take the time to reflect on this year. Look through your event analytics. Did you reach your goals? Make notes for what worked and what you’d like to change. Host a team debrief so everyone involved can share their thoughts.
Additionally, consider what your site should look like year-round. If you plan to allow participants to continue using the platform as a year-round giving space, make sure you update your site to reflect this.
Phase 6 can last for a few days or more depending on the scale of your event.
Sample Giving Event Timeline
Below is a sample giving event timeline with key tasks to help you prepare for your event.
Key Task | Phase |
Team Chat & Goal Setting | Phase 1 |
Pre Site & Registration Form Build | Phase 1 & 2 |
Pre Site & Registration Finalized | Phase 1 & 2 |
Pre Site & Registration Quality Assurance Review | Phase 1 & 2 |
Pre Site & Registration Launch | Phase 1 & 2 |
Determine & Finalize Prizes (if applicable) | Phase 3 |
Webinar Trainings (if applicable) | Phase 3 |
Prizes/Leaderboard Build (if applicable) | Phase 4 |
Early Giving/Live/Post Site Build | Phase 4 |
Early Giving/Live/Post Site Finalized | Phase 4 |
Early Giving/Live/Post Site Quality Assurance Review | Phase 4 |
Hard Close Registration | Phase 4 |
Early Giving Starts | Phase 4 |
Live Giving Event Starts | Phase 5 |
Post Site Launched | Phase 6 |
Post Event Wrap Up | Phase 6 |
Team Debrief | Phase 6 |