#RetentionWednesday

When the first Giving Tuesday was held in 2011, I was working at a social service nonprofit. I think I found out about it on Twitter, but not in the we need to do this, everyone else is OMG!!!one! way that I would have now. This was more like “I think I saw Beth Kanter or someone tweet about this, so we should do something, right?” We scrambled to put together an e-blast to send out the day before Giving Tuesday, and we saw a bit of an uptick in donations that day, but nothing special.

Fast forward three years and Giving Tuesday is a big deal. It really is the new official start of the year-end giving season. And this year, in particular, I’m seeing a lot of great blog posts, discussions, and webinars about how to prepare your organization for Giving Tuesday and make the most out of it as an opportunity for increasing awareness and giving.

The problem with Giving Tuesday – like any one-off fundraising event or campaign – is that it isn’t really built for long-term stewardship and retention. It’s a great way to get people in the door.. but how do you keep in touch with them and track them? What can you do to keep them engaged? How can you retain them as long-term donors, not just one-off supporters?

DonorPath had these questions and they’re starting a new movement for after Giving Tuesday: #RetentionWednesday. Retention Wednesday is all about making sure that the donors that you bring in on Giving Tuesday are engaged with and retained. To help nonprofits think about Retention Wednesday, they’re offering a series of live webinars with super-smart nonprofit people like Beth Kanter and Dan Ratner, the former Director of Development for Obama for America.

And because every webinar series needs a nerd to rant about how critical data cleanliness is to stewardship, they’ve asked me to participate, too. I’ll be talking about how to make sure that your Giving Tuesday data is cleaned and maintained so that you can segment and steward those donors later and keep them involved with your nonprofit.

Click here to view more info about the webinars and register to attend. The webinars will also be available as recordings later on this same page if you can’t attend live. Hope to see you there!