Photo: Panel Session at the Social Media 4 Nonprofits Conference on Silicon Valley Gives Day. Caitlin McShane from Opportunity Fund describes how they raised over $75,000.

In August 2013, Knight Foundation published the Giving Day Playbook, a website and digital publication for community foundations and other organizations interested in hosting an online Giving Day. The easy-to-use guide was packed with best practices, examples and templates from Giving Day organizations across the country.

Many organizations have found the resource valuable for planning, implementation and evaluation of their Giving Days. Here are some of their experiences:

Blue Grass Community Foundation

The Blue Grass Community Foundation has been hosting a Giving Day in Lexington, Ky., for three years, a partnership with Smiley Pete Publishing called the “Good Giving Guide.” They turned to the Giving Day Playbook to get ideas about how to restructure its prizes and matches for their 2014 campaign, which will launch in December.  Prize and match incentives build excitement and can be used to encourage particular actions by donors and nonprofits. Designing these incentives to help support Giving Day goals is a critical part of the strategy for the campaign.     

Says Liz Kip, manager of community philanthropy, “We used the spreadsheet that gives the pros/cons of different matching and prize incentives. It helped us think it through and generate a couple of ideas for our campaign. We are also in the process of revising our nonprofit toolkit, so it was really helpful to have so many examples in one place to review.”

Kip says, “The Giving Day Playbook is so valuable because it gives your team access to lots of great ideas that you may not have thought of. It also saves you an enormous amount of time because you can easily do a scan of practices. You don’t have to spend as much time tracking down examples; you can spend more time thinking about how to adapt and apply them.”

Kip also notes that the Playbook facilitates networking. “The Playbook includes a reference to our ‘Banker’s Challenge’ where 11 local banks offered matching funds.  We had several inquiries from people asking us about because they learned about it in the Playbook.”

Silicon Valley Community Foundation

On May 6, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation hosted its first 24-hour Giving Day, “Silicon Valley Gives,” which raised over $8 million for local nonprofits. Mari Ellen R. Loijens, chief business, development and brand officer, points out that the Playbook served as an ongoing reference and initial guide to building out their detailed campaign marketing strategy.  They found the day-of logistics checklists extremely valuable so they were well staffed and prepared for the event.

A big part of their strategy was focused on building the capacity of local nonprofits to effectively communicate and fundraise online, hosting 22 training sessions for 1,900 participants. Sabira Aloo, development officer for the Silicon Valley Community Foundation who organized the training, says, “The Playbook was [a] HUGE help to us, particularly because we were in our first year. We used several of the case studies in our trainings to nonprofits to demonstrate successful fundraising tactics of nonprofits in other cities.”

Caitlin McShane of the Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit that participated in the Silicon Valley Gives Day, said they raised $75,132. “That’s more than we ever raised in a single 24-hour period,” she noted during a recent conference panel. She noted that the training that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation provide helped her organization and other participating Silicon Valley nonprofits put a detailed plan in place, using examples and resources from the Giving Day Playbook.    

Midland Gives

Central Carolina Community Foundation hosted its first Midlands Gives Day on May 6, 2014 and raised $704,932.23 for 150 nonprofits in nine counties. According to Vice President of Development Heather Sherwin, the Giving Day Playbook was an exceptional resource and big contributor to the success of their Giving Day.  “At each step in our planning and implementation,” Sherwin says, “we were able to find applicable tools to apply to our work. The sample work plans, checklists and calendars helped reassure our staff that this initiative was doable.”

Sherwin said that the nonprofit recruitment and tool kits were critical to their success.   “We shared the Nonprofit Toolkit with nonprofits and also developed a NonProfit Facebook Group and weekly conference call modeled on the Knight Foundation Peer Learning.  Seventy percent of nonprofit survey respondents reported the toolkit as very helpful in preparing for Midlands Gives.”

She also said that the crisis planning section was valuable, especially when severe weather, including thunderstorms and a tornado watch, forced them to cancel a live event before the launch of the Giving Day. “We were well prepared because we had a crisis plan in place months before using the template and advice in the Giving Day Playbook.”    

Bolder Giving: Give Out Day

On May 15-16, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and allies across the country came together for 48 hours of online giving during the second annual Give OUT Day. Thousands of people across the country donated over $1 million to hundreds of their favorite nonprofits and $80,000 in prize funds were distributed to the groups engaging the most individual donors.

Jason Franklin, executive director of Bolder Giving, says the Giving Day Playbook templates and checklists were invaluable to running a smooth campaign. Franklin says that they read about the crisis management resources on Knight Blog. As it turned out, they faced a crisis with their technology platform. “The Playbook was my security blanket when it came to dealing with a crisis,” he said.  “Thank you.”

Beth Kanter is a consultant for Knight Foundation.