Surveying participating donors and nonprofits is crucial to understanding what about your Giving Day worked and did not work.  Collecting data will help you learn from your Giving Day experience and make improvements for next year.  To get a sense of how other community foundations have structured their surveys, check out this Sample Donor Survey and this Sample Nonprofit Survey.

To help get you started, we’ve adapted surveys used by The Miami Foundation to create a Donor Survey Template and Nonprofit Survey Template.  If you opt to create your own survey, be sure to craft the survey in a way that maximizes participation and completion rates while generating useful data.  Here are some tips for crafting user surveys. 

Host the survey online using SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics or another online survey tool.  You should distribute the survey as widely as possible no later than one week after your Giving Day and leave the survey open for no less than two weeks.  Start by emailing all of the Giving Day donors and participating nonprofits (donors should be providing you their email when making a donation, and nonprofits should be providing you their email when registering).  Consider asking participating nonprofits to circulate the donor survey to their email list.  Post the survey on your website and ask your strategic partners to do the same.

You need to have enough respondents to be able to meaningfully learn from your survey.  Here is a basic primer to help you figure out the correct minimum sample size.

Once the Giving Day is complete you will have the data to analyze the metrics you decided to track during the planning phase. Your donation platform should be able to provide you with much of the quantitative data regarding donor demographics, giving trends, website analytics and social sharing metrics. Talk to your donation platform provider in advance of the Giving Day to make sure they can provide you with all of the data that you’ll want to analyze. This information will enable you to judge the success of your Giving Day.

After you receive the survey responses and quantitative data, take the time to review the data with your staff.  Ask the following questions:

• What trends do you see?
• What worked?
• What didn’t work as well as you wanted it to work?
• How can you improve the Giving Day for next year?

Make sure to have someone from your staff take notes and save them in a folder where you will remember them when you begin planning your Giving Day the following year.

As the Giving Day convener, you should share your success with the broader community.  Beyond the day-of status updates, make sure to transparently report what happened on your Giving Day.  By closing the loop, you will generate community-wide pride in the accomplishments of the Giving Day and begin building excitement for the next Giving Day.

Reporting success should be done through your social channels, email, website and the press.  In reporting to Giving Day participants (nonprofits and donors) and the community-at large, you should create a healthy balance between anecdotes and hard data as your community will want to hear both.  Remain professional but make sure to infuse your communications with excitement about what your community just accomplished!

To help guide you in reporting success, check out this Sample Giving Day Website, Sample Press Release, Sample Facebook Posts, and Sample Tweets. The North Texas Giving Day Recap Video made by the Communities Foundation of Texas is a great example of sharing the success of the day with your community.

If you are ambitious, we encourage you to provide your community with a more detailed report analyzing the overall efficacy of your Giving Day through a Giving Day Report.  Here is a Sample Giving Day Report that we think is a good model.

The benefits you accrued from the Giving Day should not end once the campaign is over. Extend the value of the Giving Day by building on the experience to support your ongoing work. Ask the following questions:

• What did you learn about social media? Who were your most engaged social media followers and champions, and how can you keep them involved?
• What did you learn about your target audience? Did you identify new target audiences for increased future engagement?
• What new relationships with nonprofits did you form? Are there opportunities for you to build on the trainings you provided to participating groups?
• What media partnerships did you develop? Are there opportunities for you to continue these partnerships beyond the Giving Day?
• What new relationships did you form with local businesses, foundations, and other community partners? Are there opportunities for you to continue these partnerships beyond the Giving Day?
• What new donors did you identify who have the potential to become donor advised fund holders or major community foundation supporters? How will you follow up with them?

Follow Up and Assessment Resource Bank

• North Texas Giving Day Recap Video (Community Foundations of Texas)
• Sample Donor Survey (GiveMN)
• Sample Nonprofit Survey (GiveMN)
• Donor Survey Template (original)
• Nonprofit Survey Template (original)
• User Surveys: Do It Right or Not At All (Man With No Blog)
• Determining Sample Size (Survey System)
• Sample Giving Day Website (GiveLocalNow)
• Sample Press Release Reporting Success (Georgia Gives Day)
• Sample Facebook Post Reporting Success (GiveMN)
• Sample Tweet Reporting Success (The Seattle Foundation)
• Sample Giving Day Report (GiveMN)

Follow Up and Assessment Checklist

• Follow Up and Assessment Checklist