Hit your fundraising goals faster with high volume, high frequency giving days that gather your supporter community for a single day of giving. By focusing on one target for one day, you can amplify your network of supporters and create urgency to act now - but what makes them tick?

We asked the team behind Mater Giving Day - Simone Plunkett, Head of Philanthropy and Sidonie Petersen, Campaign Specialist - to share their learnings, triumphs, innovations from their first Mater Giving Day.

Mater Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Mater - over seven hospitals in Queensland Australia, supporting Mater’s needs to provide compassionate care and meeting unmet needs of their community. They decided to bring their community together for their direct, digital marketing campaign over 24 hours, raising $932,367. Now, in their third year they’ve raised $1,938,402. 

Here's a glimpse of the campaign in action:

Top tips to design your giving day

📝 Planning your giving day

To kick things off, agree a date of significance for your charity and start planning backwards with key deadlines to give your team as much time as possible. For the first Mater Giving Day, they only had nine weeks, so time was of the essence.

🤗 Understanding your audience

Start digging deep into who’s in your market, and who are the key people you want to activate, such as:

• Regular givers
• Community fundraisers
• Lapsed donors
• Patients
• Lottery

Re-evaluate what you know about them and how you’ve communicated with them before to design your campaign - what will resonate best with them?

📣 Choosing your call to action

Get together early with your key stakeholders for a codesign workshop to land on a key theme to drive your giving day. For the first Mater Giving Day, they chose Mater Giving Day, A day you make good things happen. 

🎁 Incentivising donors with matched giving

Predict your campaign’s potential from your giving history. Identify which major and mid-level donors you can leverage as matched givers, and use their donation to multiply your campaign total and create urgency. Make sure to secure matched gifts early on! By leveraging matched giving, Mater turned every $50 into $150 with a 3x donation multiplier.

💬 Designing your comms plan

Choose your pivotal moments in your campaign to build momentum before, during and after. For Mater’s Giving Day, they created a phased multi-channel comms approach with three key stages:

1. Save the day - which included teasers to build excitement and capture details for people who wanted to find out more or donate early
2. 24 hour countdown - which included gamification and opportunities to interact with a clear target and countdown clock
3. Thank you - which is included celebration confetti with the option to leave messages of support

Choose channels with the most impact to cut through with your supporters with a high volume, high frequency campaign. Also make sure to consider what else is in market with your supporters at the same time, and segment your comms plan to cater to different audiences.

🛠️ Being agile to adapt on the go

Plan in contingencies in preparation of any changes on the day - Mater Giving Day had lockdown the first day of their campaign, so they relied more on digital channels. It’s also a great opportunity to shout out and celebrate in-the-moment milestones as and when they happen.

🤓 Next steps

To find out more about Mater Giving Day, check out their latest giving day or watch the full video.

Got an idea for your next Giving Day? Book in a chat with our team and we’ll get you up and running in no time.