Giving Tuesday is a great reminder to all of us that charities need our financial support. Never has the need been greater than during this year of COVID. If Giving Tuesday has touched your heart, and you want to make a difference but aren’t sure where to begin, then this post is for you. Because Givio is designed for the difference-maker in all of us.

Donor, company, charity, influencer

Difference-makers come in all shapes and sizes. Donors. Companies running giving programs. Charities sponsoring fundraisers. And influencers sharing the call-to-action to support a great cause. Sometimes we fit into just one of those roles; sometimes two or three. And when the moment strikes, we want to take action.

When COVID struck earlier this year, it did not simply disrupt the charitable giving industry. COVID was an accelerant, exposing a number of challenges already impacting nonprofits. Giving to charity has been on a steady rise, but donations are coming from far fewer individual donors.

As nonprofits increasingly use technology for fundraising, online giving continues to hover around 9% of individual giving. Yet we see online retail skyrocketing. And while trust between donors and nonprofits has been eroding, younger donors seem drawn to an alternative approach to giving – peer-to-peer. That’s good for the individual who needs support, but problematic for a sector of our society that exists to help all people in need everywhere.

When COVID struck earlier this year, something else happened as well. Donors, companies, charities and influencers were motivated to do respond. To make a difference.  And Giving Tuesday reminds us that there is still much work to do.  But Giving Tuesday is more a call to action than a plan of action. Giving Tuesday, however, is growing as a movement. And GivingTuesday.org provides support, best practices, and encouragement for fundraisers everywhere.  It is in that spirit – and at the risk of this post sounding like a commercial – that I’d like to explain how a single giving app is designed to help ALL difference-makers make a difference.

For donors

When we created Givio, the first person we thought of is the donor – the giver, the most important person in a giving transaction. And Givio became an easy-to-use, mobile app, carried with you everywhere you go. With profiles of every charity, school and Native American tribe in the country – that’s 1.5 million and counting – in your pocket. When the moment strikes, open the app, find the org, tap and give. It’s that easy.

We put control in the hands of the donor in order to help rebuild some of that lost sense of trust we mentioned before. No forms required, no registrations, no data mining by some big social platform. And for givers who want to encourage others, just tap the share button and the charity page you just gave to is now in the hands – on the mobile device – of every friend, family member or colleague that you chose to share with.

For companies

Next, we thought about business. Companies are, after all, another type of giver. So many companies today support charitable giving. Sometimes we call this workplace giving, sometimes Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR), sometimes corporate sponsorships. No matter what the term, most businesses give. So we created a simple campaign tool that lets a user tap on any charity page in the app, fill out a few fields of information, and voila! – a campaign is created that can be shared with colleagues, employees and even business partners. You can learn more here.

Several members on the Givio team come from the corporate giving world. We are very familiar with CSR software, expensive enterprise platforms, and the challenges of just getting the attention of employees to ask them to give. The last thing we wanted was to recreate that experience. So we built a Slack app for Givio and integrated within one of the most popular communication platforms for businesses on the market. Now you can create a campaign for your company, open up a Slack channel for giving, and instantly share your giving campaign across your Slack network. Oh, and you can add a matching gift, too. Talk about convenience!

For charities

After running campaigns on Givio with businesses, something wonderful happened. Nonprofits benefiting from all that generosity asked “can Givio help us with a virtual fundraiser?” The answer was simple: “Of course!” The same features and functions that we designed for donors and companies can be used by our nonprofit fundraising friends with great success.

To be fair, Givio is not an enterprise fundraising platform with built-in digital marketing modules and donor retention analytics. But then, how many nonprofits can really afford all that enterprise software? Instead, Givio is best suited for virtual events and social fundraisers that leverage networks and connections to reach more and new donors.

But then something even more wonderful happened. Charities and businesses began collaborating over Givio. If you’ve been following closely, you have probably figured this out already. Charities can use Givio as their own workplace giving platform. For example: Charity ABC asked 4 board members to run a fundraiser using Givio and benefitting their organization. 3 said yes; 2 used a Slack channel to promote; and even the board member who did not run a campaign made a donation. Givio accounts are free. Nobody has to license workplace giving software.

For influencers

Influencers can be very powerful fundraisers. Especially around days like Giving Tuesday or during the holidays. There are lots of influencers all around us – people with a following or sphere of influence. Even a company executive can be an influencer with employees, suppliers, even customers. But the most effective influencers build networks of followers over social media. And from time to time, they promote a product or a cause.

The challenge for influencers who want to help raise money for a charity is that just about all fundraising software is “a closed garden”. If I’m using Facebook for a giving campaign, for example, I can only reach people on Facebook. And they have to be registered, logged in. If I share any sort of giving page generated by enterprise fundraising software, donors have to fill out forms. You get the picture.

Givio is different. Influencers can set up and/or share giving campaigns over any social platform, inviting followers to “just give”. No forms to fill out. No registrations, sign ups or sign ins. Givio is that simple. Influencers can turn 1 gift into 100, or a thousand. Learn more here.

Giving Tuesday and every other day of the week

We started with an idea to build software for the giver. We ended up building software that helps just about everybody to give. Difference-makers of all shapes and sizes are using Givio. And days like Giving Tuesday are catalysts to help those in need.

But let’s not stop this Giving Tuesday. With Givio on your phone, in your pocket, you are prepared to give or fundraise whenever the opportunity strikes. May the opportunity strike often!