Missions to Movements
Missions to Movements is the nonprofit marketing and fundraising podcast that helps you grow recurring donors, scale monthly giving programs, and build digital campaigns that convert.
Hosted by Dana Snyder—speaker, strategist, and founder of Positive Equation—this show is packed with actionable nonprofit growth strategies, social media tips, and fundraising best practices.
Each week, you’ll hear how organizations are increasing donor retention, building thought leadership, and using digital fundraising to drive real impact. If you want to learn how to attract monthly donors, master nonprofit marketing, and transform your mission into a movement, this podcast is for you.
Missions to Movements
How Nonprofits Can Get Featured in Holiday Gift Guides with AI-Powered Pitches
Holiday gift guides present a powerful opportunity for nonprofits to position their monthly giving programs and symbolic gifts as meaningful alternatives to traditional presents.
With millions of people searching for gifts that create lasting impact, now is the perfect time to pitch your nonprofit's offerings to publications, local outlets, and influencers who create "gifts that give back" content.
• Timing is crucial – editors are finalizing holiday gift guides between October and December
• Gift guides provide visibility through shares, links, Google searches, and now AI recommendations
• Being featured by third parties adds credibility and positions your offerings as giftable experiences
• Frame monthly giving as a "subscription gift" that delivers impact 12 times a year
• Prepare assets in advance including photos, sample copy, and quotes from leadership
• Target national publications, cause-specific sites, local outlets, and social impact influencers
• Don't discount yourself – your mission deserves to be featured in holiday gift guides
If you land in a gift guide, please tag me! I'd love to celebrate your feature and share it with my audience.
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Tis the season of listicles of favorite gifts to begin. You've probably seen them the best gift for the outdoor enthusiast. Or 50 thoughtful and unique gifts for your best friend that one is for real, it's from Oprah. Or gifts for the person that has everything the Skims has a gift list. Your local city magazine holiday guides have gifts lists. There are thousands of people, actually, I should say probably millions. There are thousands of people, actually, I should say probably millions. There are millions of people browsing for meaningful gifts, and how amazing could it be if they discover that their gift changes lives.
Speaker 1:The gift guides that you see published aren't just for products anymore. They are one of the best ways to position your monthly giving program or if you have symbolic gifts or nonprofit merchandise as the gift that keeps giving. So today I wanted to just talk through how you can land yourself in holiday gift guides and how you can use AI combined with Gloria Chow. She was a podcast guest on episode 181. Guest on episode 181. And I'm going to repeat her CPR method that she uses for pitching so that editors won't ignore your message.
Speaker 1:So why do gift guides matter? I think they're powerful really for three reasons. One is timing. So they are launching between literally now, october and December. So immediately start to send out this pitch and get it out, and this is when donors and shoppers are already shopping for meaningful gifts. Two visibility these guides get shared and linked and Googled and now will pop up in AI searches and live on way past just the holidays. So visibility is huge. Again, I referenced thousands, millions of people are going to click on these. Three positioning so you're getting mentioned by a third party. So that is added credibility and boost and you get to frame your monthly giving or a symbolic gift that you might have, or swag or something that's not just charitable but giftable. So imagine somebody giving $25 a month in their friend's name instead of a scented candle right, impact all year long. So these the pitches are can be national publications Think Good Housekeeping or Oprah or the Skimm or the New York Times or Buzzfeed. They all run and just search for these gifts that give back lists or holiday gift guides anything in that verbiage. There are specific cause-driven sites. You will have local outlets, city lifestyle magazines, regional blogs that love highlighting hometown causes or hometown small businesses. There are influencers and newsletters. Many social impact influencers will curate carousel posts or reels this time of the year or newsletters with gifts that do good, and so you want to get the word out there about yours.
Speaker 1:You want to frame it as this wonderful gift experience so you could be pitching monthly giving as a subscription gift, a gift that shows up every month. So I always share. When my sister-in-law got me the book of a month club, I think it was like for three months she did it, and so one thing that I've been talking to multiple donation platforms on is how can you set a specific end date to a monthly gift? So like three, six, nine, 12. So you could like set parameters for somebody to set their gift. But I know my mom buys my daughter Kennedy a magazine subscription for a year. I've purchased a newspaper subscription for my husband for a year. Like this is not new, we do this all the time. It's just thinking about it in the sense of it being a monthly gift Symbolic packages so if X amount $50 by school supplies, they receive a printable gift card or something.
Speaker 1:If you have merchandise with a mission, if you have apparel or candles or artisan products that are made by your beneficiaries, you can list those in these listicles. If you have special experiences, tickets, tours invite only events that could be also marketed in this way. The secret is to really make it easy for editors to see. This belongs in my gifts that give back section. This is so unique. So Gloria Chow again, it's episode 181, and she goes into more detail, teaching her CPR method, which stands for credibility point of view, and relevance is what you want to have come across in how you actually draft your pitch, your email that you're going to send out. This is also similar to how my publicist, antonio Santora, pitches me and has landed me spots, tv spots on 11 Alive, the NBC affiliate in Atlanta. I've been on the radio and you can use AI, chatgpt to help you craft this. So, for example, and let's go through the CPR method that Gloria teaches. So C is credibility. This is sharing your track record in one sentence. So, example as the only regional nonprofit reducing hunger year round, we've supported 2000 families so far this year. So that's an example.
Speaker 1:In AI, maybe you could ask write one sentence highlighting our nonprofit's credibility with a key stat from this year. That would be your prompt. Okay, p is the point of view. This is offering a bold or a unique angle. Example most holiday gifts get used once. This one keeps giving 12 times a year. So using chat GPT maybe you could put in write a punchy line about why monthly giving, our monthly giving program, is a better holiday gift than a traditional present. And then R relevance we're going to tie it to the season.
Speaker 1:So, example with the holidays around the corner, readers are looking for meaningful gifts that create lasting change. So your AI prompt maybe you say write one sentence tying our monthly giving program to the holiday season and urgency of year end giving. Now, if you take all those together and combine them, you would have a tight ready to send pitch. So here's an example of what that could look like all together. Subject line I would play with this so that it's openable. But holiday gifts that give back, a gift that keeps giving Um, if you've specifically researched their past article, then a I would link to it and I would probably mention that we say hi.
Speaker 1:Editor's name. I know you're pulling together holiday gift guide ideas and I wanted to share one that's simple, meaningful and lasts all year. Our nonprofit helps blank and we've supported blank this year. Instead of a one-time gift, readers can give X amount per month in someone's name and that gift keeps creating impact 12 times a year. Each recipient gets updates, a personalized card, et cetera, et cetera, so that it feels like a true gift experience. I think this could be a great gift for your gifts that give back section. I'd be happy to send high-res photos, sample copy or a quick quote from our executive director Easy peasy, warmly, or thanks for the consideration at the end. So what I recommend doing this week because time is of the essence make a short list of five gift guides. This can be international, national, local, an influencer you can search for this on ChatGPT. Use AI, use the CPR method to draft a couple different pitch emails.
Speaker 1:Prep some of your assets. So something that Antonio taught me is that we have a Google Drive that has my media kit. It has headshots of me. It has some sample photos of my book, like things that we know we're going to talk about, because they are going to ask for those things. They're going to want a image, a photo. If this is TV, they're going to want a. Those things they're going to want a image, a photo. If this is TV, they're going to want a series of them to show while you're talking on TV. So prep that, put it all together and tie it with a bow so that can be lifestyle photos.
Speaker 1:If you have templates, if there's your monthly giving, pricing tiers all of these things put together a simple one pager and then start pitching in October AKA basically right now.
Speaker 1:This is when editors are working and starting to finalize these lists because they have longer lead times. The biggest thing with this is don't discount yourself to think that you can't be included in these. Your monthly giving program, your symbolic gift that you have, is such a beautiful opportunity to share with somebody during the holiday season. So if you use the CPR method to pitch, if you land in a gift guide, please tag me. I would love to know. Send me a message. I will celebrate your feature. I will share it with my audience. I would love to hear about it and, as always with these bonus episodes, if you find these helpful, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you're listening. Let me know what you think, drop me a note on Instagram or LinkedIn and I cannot wait for you to hear Wednesday's episode and then I will see you back on Monday for the last bonus episode in this series. Have an awesome day.
