Giving Tuesday Versus Cyber Monday: Phonathon Impact

I always struggle with the effectiveness of Giving Tuesday from a pragmatic point of view, wondering if we are simply receiving a smaller gift today versus a larger gift tomorrow. Are we really inspiring our donors to renew their support and to do so at a higher level?  I also wonder how Cyber Monday is influencing our results, causing me to speculate that after a day of spending money online, donors may be less likely to “share the wealth” with their alma mater.

When it came to Giving Tuesday versus Cyber Monday, my team began digging into our phonathon results to see what answers we might find.  We looked at how retention donors (donors that gave last fiscal year) performed on Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday versus the previous two months.

The results are surprising:

Did Giving Tuesday pledge rates out-perform October and November?

Answer: Sometimes.  Only 58% of the institutions we analyzed experienced a Giving Tuesday that outperformed both of the previous months.  Certainly, other factors could be at play, but on the surface, it doesn’t tell us that Giving Tuesday is hurting or helping with regards to pledge rate, at least with regards to the phonathon.

Giving Tuesday always outperforms Cyber Monday pledge rates?

Answer:  No. 46% of the phonathon programs we analyzed saw Cyber Monday retention pledge rates outperform Giving Tuesday.

Average Gift is stronger on Giving Tuesday than Cyber Monday?

Answer:  No. In fact, Cyber Monday at first glance appears to be a better day to phone your retention donors if you want to raise more dollars.

So what does this mean?

While Giving Tuesday is an important day in the world of fundraising, it’s just one day of 365 where we need to focus on our constituents.  Giving Tuesday or any “give day” can’t replace the work that happens during the rest of the year.

The excitement from Giving Tuesday may not translate to better results in all channels, especially as phonathon is concerned.

We need to understand why some institutions experienced phonathon success and others experienced a negative impact on Giving Tuesday. We will be sharing more in future blog posts on what those institutions did that made helped their phonathon excel.

We would love to hear how Giving Day impacted your phonathon!