Last week, the long-anticipated 2024 Giving Season kicked off with a bang. Since then, fundraisers have been gathering performance metrics, extracting insights, and determining which optimizations to implement in order to get the most out of the rest of the year — and beyond.
At Blue State, we’ve been doing something similar: We assessed Giving Tuesday performance across our entire nonprofit portfolio and looked at it alongside our 2024 consumer research that analyzed how the presidential election affected donor behavior. This included two waves of research from April and August and a third wave in mid-November to the same donors from the August survey, capturing how their charitable attitudes, priorities, and intent shifted following the election.
What we learned — and the context we can provide for some of this year’s giving trends — might surprise you. Let’s get into it:
Two channels pull ahead of the pack
SMS and paid media showed consistent fundraising gains as donor behavior evolves and inbox overcrowding worsens.
SMS met the moment. Back in August, Blue State surveyed nonprofit donors on what behaviors and actions they were taking in response to the influx of political ads and solicitations and saw lots of people looking to digitally detox. After the election, we followed up to understand what changes in habits they had undergone: Self care measures were some of the most likely, specifically consuming less news and blocking social media. And while the plan to unplug applied to channels like email, social, and news media, few mentioned their SMS. Which brings us to Giving Tuesday, where our partners saw strong SMS results with 137% growth in revenue year-over-year. In 2024, SMS grew to 15% of total digital revenue for large international and human rights NGOs, with one organization seeing a near 300% increase in SMS totals YoY. Don’t sleep on this channel!
Paid media drives existing donors. We saw this trend begin in 2023, and now we’re seeing it to an even greater extent at the start of this Giving Season: Paid media is doing so much more than driving acquisition — it is driving an increasingly high percentage of renewal revenue from existing donors who are being prompted to donate by CTV or display ads, or owned channels like email, and then completing their gift by searching and clicking an ad. For example, one industry-leading NGO saw 75% of paid revenue come from prior donors. Similarly, for an industry-leading health foundation, the proportion of gifts from returning donors was 67% compared to 25% during non-peak times. Meanwhile, both of these organizations experienced slower growth (or even less revenue) on other channels. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Invest in your paid media programs to meet donors where they are, and measure the performance of your integrated marketing campaigns across channels.
Healthy cross-channel relationships support consistent performance
Overall list and channel health drove solid performance, and even if the number of donations dropped, average gift increased.
Less (giving) is more (on average). Our post-election consumer survey revealed that more donors reported being unlikely to make a donation to an organization before the end of the year. Well, what happened on Giving Tuesday could be a sign of that behavior playing out: Across all channels in our portfolio we saw consistent year over year increases in revenue, but those returns were driven by fewer — or flat — gifts YoY. So, who is still giving — and who is giving more? Beyond self-reported likelihood to donate, our survey also asked donors if they planned to give more than prior years…
Healthy signals from mid-tier donors. What we discovered post-election was the number of donors who intended to give less at year-end jumped from 21% to 27% — the majority of whom typically give under $100 (64%). But, when asking who intends to give more, donors aged 35-74 who give more than $500 emerged as key cohorts to counterbalance this overarching trend in declining gifts. The secret to capturing this success? A strong cross-channel strategy that focuses on a broader range of donors, especially those with significant means. Reach these cohorts with substance and storytelling across channels to unlock their full value.
Neglecting list health can have adverse effects on other channels. An interesting trend emerged this year: Partners with healthier email lists saw overall revenue grow even if email specifically didn’t see big improvements. For one partner in particular, concerted efforts were made earlier in the year to improve list health through reactivation — and on Giving Tuesday they saw an impressive 59% year-over-year improvement. But the real win? Nearly 70% of all gifts came from their active non-donor list — a testament to how much engagement drives conversion. Take care of your donors and non-donors alike, folks!
Giving Tuesday creative delivers on strategy and tactics
And finally: What can we learn from Giving Season creative thus far? Well, to stand out amongst the barrage of messages and CTAs that come along with Cyber Monday/Giving Tuesday — holy smokes, our inboxes! — Blue State’s partners launched dynamic creative that blended performance insights and aesthetic beauty.
Here are a handful of top performers from this year’s Giving Season so far and some key takeaways from each. In short: matches and deadlines are must-haves, as are specifics when describing donor impact, and always aspire to elevate your appeals with a human connection.
1. Matches and deadlines galore
In an ongoing effort to stand out from the competition and overcome our greatest enemies — apathy and procrastination — match challenges, deadlines, accelerators, and extensions have become go-to tactics. To grab extra attention, many organizations develop special match challenge pools to offer larger gift multipliers, like this match 5X “upgrade” appeal from Amnesty International USA which was its top-performing appeal of Giving Tuesday.
And this appeal releasing additional matching funds in the evening on Giving Tuesday was a top performer for the second year in a row:
2. Specificity and transparency
Alongside the transactional appeal of a larger match multiplier, many organizations also had success with copy and graphics illustrating their impact in ways that were simple, specific, and skimmable. Below are two email examples from UK for UNHCR and Médecins Sans Frontières, along with a high-performing donor acquisition social media ad from Mercy Corps:
3. Personal and powerful
Across much of the top-performing creative we reviewed from Giving Season, we identified a number of elements that made the appeals more personal and people-focused.
Oxfam’s top performer of Giving Tuesday helped create a sense of community and momentum, featuring a graphic with a scrolling list of names of recent donors — a powerful bit of social proof that motivated donors to join in on the generosity of the Giving Season.
What’s next for Giving Season 2024 & beyond
- SMS channel growth: As audiences cut back on their digital content consumption, showing up in their SMS inboxes will keep your organization front-and-center in a mixed-use channel.
- Full-funnel paid media campaigns: With changing giving behaviors, full-funnel paid media campaigns are more important than ever. Invest in meeting donors where they are, and measure the performance of your integrated marketing campaigns across channels.
- Embracing mid-tier donors: Don’t just rely on quantity of gifts; instead, invest in a strong cross-channel strategy that focuses on quality — reach a broader range of donors and engage them with substance and storytelling to unlock their full value.
- Building strong support on email: Keeping up with your email list health and maintaining donor and non-donor relationships is a proven strategy for improving overall performance.
- Clear, convincing, and human-centered creative: Leveraging best practices like matches is essential, but so is a clear case for giving and a connection to the personal impact of a gift.
If you have more questions about our fundraising research and insights, get in touch with us here.