Behind the Scenes: Arizona Gives Day

In just 24 hours, #AZGivesDay raised $2.74 million for nonprofits. See how Casual Astronaut helped the campaign

Once a year, nonprofit organizations from across the state come together for Arizona Gives Day — a 24-hour marathon of online giving to community causes. This year, we broke the nonprofit record with more than 1,000 participating organizations, a third of which were first-time participants.

Here’s how our team supported and promoted this fifth-annual day of giving — and how you can implement the strategies into your own marketing efforts:

Tip 1: Create shareworthy branding.

To convey a sense of energy, we paired a lively new campaign logo (the Arizona state outline and campaign tagline) with a bright color palette. In addition to the branding of the campaign itself, we created print, email and social collateral for participating nonprofits to use in their own outreach. The graphics were shared hundreds of times across platforms and email campaigns.

Tip 2: Answer questions — before they’re asked.

This year, our team introduced a series of content pieces to both inform the Arizona Gives Day audience about the purpose of the day, and to help provide resources to nonprofits before they needed them. Topics included how to take advantage of the state tax credit extension, how to help spread the word about the day, how to pitch the media for AZ Gives coverage, advice from 2016 prize winners, and more.

Tip 3: Raise awareness across multiple platforms.

To increase awareness of Arizona Gives Day, our team created two different series of email campaigns targeting donors and nonprofits. In addition, we ran an array of targeted social ads promoting the event and sharing information leading up to the event and encouraging participation on the day itself.