#GivingTuesday is a fall event. It’s technically not fall yet, so you’ve got time to register, right? November is so far away! It’s August and there’s a heat index of 100° outside. You just got back from your summer vacation! There’s no need to rush to register for an event in November … RIGHT?
You can probably see where we’re going with this. You should register for #GivingTuesday now. And here’s why.
Register here, if that’s all the convincing you needed
1. You’ll have more time to plan
There are some marketing geniuses who can pull together a #GivingTuesday campaign last-minute and knock it out of the park. But unless you are one of these wunderkinds, you’ll want as much time as possible to come up with a solid plan for #GivingTuesday. Because a failure to plan is planning to fail, and so on.
By registering now, you’ll ensure that you have ample time to come up with a solid #GivingTuesday plan. You’ll also have plenty of time to draft and test emails, create any content you want to use for your #GivingTuesday campaign (like photos and videos), and get your ducks in a row before November rolls around.
We’ve got a planning guide to help you get started — but the first step is registration!
2. You’ll be better able to engage peer-to-peer fundraisers
One of the best ways to expand your reach on #GivingTuesday is to utilize peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraisers. These are individuals who already support your nonprofit (think volunteers, very engaged donors, board members…) who create a page on Mightycause where they encourage their social network to donate to your cause. And if you want to engage P2P fundraisers in #GivingTuesday, you’ll need to get started early. Because when you wait until the last minute to ask them to fundraise for you, it puts them on the spot and doesn’t give them much time to prepare.
Nonprofits that effectively engage P2P fundraisers for #GivingTuesday give themselves plenty of time to get people signed up and stoked to fundraise for them and give their fundraisers a healthy amount of time to put their pages together. Some go above and beyond for P2P fundraisers by helping them create their pages, preparing talking points for them, and giving them image and video assets they can use for their campaign.
3. You can engage volunteers better, too
Sometimes, when nonprofits register for #GivingTuesday late and work frantically to pull a campaign together in the last week before #GivingTuesday, they tell us that they are short-handed. But there are people to help you when you’re short-handed; they are called volunteers.
And for nonprofits who may not have the staff bandwidth to run a #GivingTuesday campaign, volunteers are a godsend. They can help you with your Mightycause page, schedule social media posts for you, draft emails, and even take photos and record video for you to use in your campaign. But if you want to make the most of volunteer help, you have to plan ahead. You have to register, start talking to volunteers, recruit them for the jobs you need done, and give them enough time to succeed.
4. Hone your skills with our free #GivingTuesday training
At Mightycause, we spend a lot of time creating training resources and planning webinars to help nonprofits make the most of their participation in #GivingTuesday. We devote time and love and all of our combined smarts to creating comprehensive training because we want nonprofits to reach their goals and then some on #GivingTuesday. But when nonprofits register last minute, they often miss out on the trainings altogether, or watch recorded webinars in a panicked frenzy a week before the event.
Obviously, that’s not ideal. We want your nonprofit to go into #GivingTuesday cool, calm and ready to fundraise like champs. So, when you register for #GivingTuesday early, you get to attend webinars, put the recommendations in our training materials into action and make sure you’re 100% ready for the big day.
5. Save yourself from stress — don’t work last-minute
#GivingTuesday is a good day … and we want it to be a fun, awesome, worthwhile day for nonprofits. But working last-minute can turn an inspiring day of online philanthropy into a stressful, soul-sucking day of panic.
So, don’t panic. Plan ahead.
Your campaign usually gives you away if you slapped it together at the last minute, hopped up on caffeine and stress. Register early, and get your campaign planned, your emails and social media posts scheduled, your volunteers working for you and your P2P fundraisers fundraising for you, so on November 27th, you can sit back and watch your hard work pay off.