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
Send This One Email (That Cuts Through the Noise) the Day AFTER GivingTuesday
Most organizations rush straight from GivingTuesday into metrics, wrap-ups, and end-of-year planning, but if you do, you’re missing the most valuable moment of all: the DAY AFTER, when donors are still inspired and emotionally connected to the gift they just made.
In this replay of my most downloaded episode ever, you’ll hear the super simple, text-only email that can dramatically strengthen donor relationships, why it works, and how the responses can uncover donor motivations you’d never know otherwise.
Every single donation represents a person who chose your cause among MILLIONS of nonprofits!
And these replies can become fuel for future campaigns, major donor follow-ups, and segmentation strategies.
Resources & Links
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Already have a monthly giving program? The Mini Monthly Giving Mastermind starts in January and is just for you.
Register now for the FREE Monthly Giving Summit on February 25-26th, the only virtual event where nonprofits unite to master monthly giving, attract committed believers, and fund the future with confidence.
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Hello. Happy Thanksgiving. It is tomorrow, and I am so thrilled that you are listening. And we are also right around the corner from Giving Tuesday. So I'm going to keep this short and sweet as maybe you are cooking something for your family or your friends or you're traveling. And this is going to be a repeat episode because last year it was just so good. And it has been literally the top episode on my podcast. We are repurposing today episode 158, how to stand out on Giving Tuesday. Send this one email and you'll captivate donors. So in this episode, I share a very straightforward, very simple, text-only email template. I share why, and it is going to be something that you're going to want to segment any donors that give to you on Giving Tuesday. Send it out, and it's powerful. So without further ado, take a listen. And so it's going to probably be a little bit of a whirlwind. You're probably in that right now of everything that is Giving Tuesday. So first things first, like take a deep breath. Yes, literally right now. Deep breath. I can't really take a deep breath right now, but if you can take a deep breath, and let's just picture the fact that you did it. Whether your organization is about to raise$100 or$100 million, y'all showed up. You're telling your story and you invited people to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And people are going to respond. And last year, what I wanted to share is I donated to a local animal organization. And I got this lovely email. I don't know if it was mass sent. It looked like it was sent from an individual, from the executive director, from his personal Gmail or Outlook, whatever system they used. And then crickets. Nothing happened after that initial thank you. And I have searched spam and trash. Nothing happened after my one-time, first-time gift to that organization. So, and this is a learning that I think is more common than not. So before you dive back into like end of year campaign metrics, start analyzing everything after Giving Tuesday, I really want you to pause and sit with something that, and you know this, right? Every single donation represents a person who chose your cause specifically on Giving Tuesday. And they could have given anywhere, right? There are millions of nonprofits out there, but something about your mission, about the email, about a social post, about something in their lives spoke to them. So this brings me like back to this reflection of what happened to me last year and how I can make sure that you don't do something similar. And this is the challenge is we want to just ask your donors why they gave. I'm not talking about doing a formal survey. I'm not talking about a focus group in a simple email that you can prep right now to be able to send to your Giving Tuesday donors. Or send it the week after. It doesn't have to be like crazy complicated right afterwards. I want you to like take a breath afterwards. But so here's what it's gonna say. Hi, first name. This is very simple. All text. Your gift on Giving Tuesday meant so much to us. But before I share more about the impact you're making, I'd love to know what inspired you to give. What part of our mission resonates with you personally? Just hit reply and let me know. I read every response personally with gratitude and put your name. That's it. There's no fancy formatting here. There's no buttons, there's no asks. It's literally just a text-only email, just genuine curiosity and appreciation. The goal here is it's a reply email. And there's nothing more valuable to your email tool system that you use and to you than hearing back from somebody. And the responses might surprise you. Maybe they will mention a social media post that moved them. Maybe they will share a personal connection to your cause that you would have never known about. Maybe they'll tell you about an amazing staff person on your team who made them feel really seen and valued at an event you recently just had. And these stories, these whys are pure gold. They will fuel your next campaign specifically to this individual. They can energize your team. And I know, and I trust me, I get it. This podcast is the pinnacle of I share. And a lot of times I never hear anything back. And I wonder, what in the world do people think? So I know you feel the same way when you send out an email. And most of the times you're not hearing anything back. So we want to hear something back here, and you're inviting them to do that. So importantly, these reply backs remind you that fundraising, right? It's not just about the transaction of the donation. Yes, that is extremely meaningful. But this is transformational for the people that you serve and for the people who make the work possible. So before, like when Giving Tuesday wraps, and I know you want to jump into the metrics and back into your ungiving, take this moment. If you do not have an email like this in your like thank you structure, take this time to connect, to listen, to celebrate these individuals and the hearts that are behind them. This is strictly coming from my own personal donation experience. You've got this, your donors got your back. They want to share these things with you, especially if you can send this in a really timely fashion where they've just made the gift and they're feeling that inspiration. I share this in my book when I talk about step five, which is share constant joy and gratitude. This is it. Like they want to share that joy with you. So just an idea. Again, I will read the email. I will go back to it really quickly. Again, this is what it's going to say. It's a simple email. Send it to your Giving Tuesday donors. Hi, first name. Your gift on Giving Tuesday meant so much to us. Before I share more about the impact you're making, I'd love to know what inspired you to give? What part of our mission resonates with you personally? Just hit reply and let me know. I read every response personally with gratitude. Your name. Again, this is no images should be in there. No buttons should be in there. Ideally, this can be sent from a personalized outlook or Gmail. There are ways to get fancy snancy and automate this with Zapier, by the way. But if you just want this is a great task for an intern, dependent upon your quantity of emails that you're sending. Or if you can just in your already automated flow process, if you can create an email that's like this, remove any imagery. Ideally, remove maybe you can have your logo at the top. That would be like the minimum. But ideally, you want this to feel so custom coming from you or someone on your team. So again, happy, happy, happy giving Tuesday. I hope you have the best day. Please soak in all the joy and the celebration that is this day. And I cannot wait to hear. Please DM me on Instagram or send me a note on LinkedIn, Dana Snyder. Let me know how this goes. And in the following episodes, I have one more of the leadership series. And then I'm going to be diving into, I did this two years ago, and everyone loved it. So it's going to come back. I'm going to share a few of my favorite things, including tools and 2025 like trends and strategies that I think that we should really focus on that I'm also going to be utilizing and have seen work in my business. And I'm going to share those with you and have a very special announcement about the monthly giving summit and that it's back. So I'm going to share a little bit about that. So lots of good things to come in the month of December. So thank you so much for being here. If you love this show, please drop a review and make sure that you're subscribed to get the episodes every Wednesday. And I will see you next week. Same time, same place. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movement. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. Your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
