9 Ways to Use Facebook Live for Giving Tuesday

OK, you’ve been hearing a lot about Facebook Live and other live-streaming social media platforms. You’re even toying with doing it this year on Giving Tuesday but are still having some reservations. Maybe it’s because you’ve never done it before and don’t want to mess anything up. Perhaps you have no idea how to even go live on Facebook. Maybe you think it’s a waste of time, that if you go live, nobody will even show up.

Get out of your head with it, and take the plunge. If you mess up, it’s ok, it’s not supposed to be perfect anyways. If you don’t know how to go live, it’s super easy, just Google it. If you’re afraid nobody will show up, do it anyways. Let this be the year you jump into the live game.

When the floodgates of Giving Tuesday open, you have to do more than just participate. You need to stand out. How can you separate yourself from the thousands of other nonprofits asking donors for money the same day as you? Live-streaming. Here are 9 ways you can use Facebook live to connect, engage, and convert donors on Giving Tuesday:

1. Announce Goal — At the beginning of the day, announce your goal for the day to your Facebook audience. This may mean a specific dollar amount or it may mean specific items that you are asking donors to help fund.

2. Facility Tour — Facility tours are a great way to give your donors (and prospective donors) a peek behind the curtain of your organization. Oftentimes, they only see a marketing piece from you, but rarely get to see inside the heart of your organization. Think about how powerful of an impression it would make on your donors to show them your health research laboratories, food pantries, disaster recovery warehouses, animal shelters and more. As you’re doing a tour, you can talk to some of the employees and have them describe his or her role. This shows exactly whatthe donors are helping to fund and why they should make a gift. What about a new campaign called “Giving TOURSday?” It’s ideas like these that separate you from the pack of other nonprofits on this giving day.

3. Staff Interviews — Here’s a no-brainer fact: all nonprofits are run by people. It’s the biggest asset of nonprofits. Use this to your advantage and interview your employees live on Giving Tuesday. Have them tell why they work there and what it means to them. This helps to humanize your organization and builds trust with donors that their money is going toward an organization with people that care just as much about the cause as they do.

4. Leadership CTA — Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity for leaders of the organization to lead the charge by personally giving donors a call-to-action (CTA). Whether it’s a president, executive director, or other leader, it signals from the top of the organization that this is an important day to give and tell why.

5. Interview Those Impacted — There is no more powerful story than the ones told by those directly impacted by nonprofits. The story of the adult that turned their life around because of a drug rehabilitation program. Or the story of a patient who benefited from medical research breakthroughs. Even if your organization doesn’t directly impact humans, such as environmental or animal care organizations, the stories still exist from people involved with the work. Giving Tuesday is an opportunity to tell those stories live for your audience.

6. Updates Toward Goal — Facebook Live and other live-streaming platforms have the huge benefit of immediacy. It’s the reason live streaming has become so popular the last few years; you can tell the story exactly at the time it unfolds. On Giving Tuesday, use this to your advantage and provide updates throughout the day. If you go this route, I’d recommend going live mid-morning, afternoon, and evening at a minimum. You could even go extreme with it, and do a 24 hour live stream, similar to a telethon you’d see on TV. Maybe you have “operators standing by”, or other type of agenda that includes special guests to keep donors engaged throughout the day.

7. Last Second Push — In the event you don’t live stream the whole day, it may be beneficial to close out the day with a last minute live stream to push you over the edge of your goal. This last-minute push creates urgency, and you can tell how short you are of your goal and ask for those gifts in the eleventh hour.

8. Matches / Biz Promo — If you have a donor, community partner, or business that is willing to put up a match for Giving Tuesday, feature that person (or persons) on your live stream. Oh, and by the way, you should be trying to get a match anyways for Giving Tuesday. Live streaming a match announcement helps to build more excitement around it.

9. Donor Shout Outs — Throughout the day, you post status updates on social media that give shout outs to your donors for making gifts. Depending on the size of your organization, you might give a shout out to every single donor, or you may just shout out donors over a specific giving level. Why not make it even more personal and give hourly shout outs on Facebook Live?

Which ones from this list would be reasonable for you to pull off this year? It may be too late for some, so keep this list handy for next year when you start your Giving Tuesday planning. Your organization may be able to pull off several of these within the same Giving Tuesday. Why not announce a goal, a match, give a tour, give donor shout outs and more? It take a little planning, but you can pull it off. If you have a smartphone or a computer/laptop with a camera/webcam, there’s absolutely no reason to not tackle live streaming this year. You can do it, I believe in you!

Your Turn: Did I miss anything from this list? What are some things you’ve done with live-streaming for your nonprofit? If you used any of these ideas, how’d it go?

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