5 essential roles for your nonprofit’s Giving Day team

The pressure of running a successful Giving Day campaign doesn’t have to fall on just one person at your nonprofit organization. By establishing a Giving Day team, you can easily assign responsibilities and organize your Giving Day event more effectively.

Here are five essential roles for your Giving Day Team:

• Team lead
• Fundraising lead
• Tech lead
• Supporter lead
• Marketing and communications lead

Let's look at the responsibilities of each of these roles in more detail.

Team lead

The team lead’s job is to establish the campaign’s purpose before Giving Day. On the day itself, they ensure that everything is running smoothly and progressing as planned. The main responsibilities of a team lead include:

• Setting the purpose and tone of the campaign.
• Determining when you’ll run your Giving Day campaign.
• Determining how the Giving Day will fit within your current fundraising plan, with the help of the fundraising lead.
• Helping the fundraising lead set goals.
• Ensuring each team member is working toward the same goal.
• Acting as the liaison between your board, volunteers, and staff.

This position is best held by your nonprofit’s development director, executive director, or board president.

Fundraising lead

The fundraising lead will help the tech lead, supporter lead, and marketing and communications lead tell the story of your nonprofit. Their main responsibilities include:

• Writing the campaign story by summarizing what you’re raising money for and who it will benefit.
• Establishing best practices for appealing to donors.
• Determining campaign goals, both monetary and non-monetary.
• Finding business sponsors to partner with and stewarding those relationships.
• Reaching out to major donors to ensure they feel appreciated during Giving Day and encouraging them to make an additional donation.
• Assisting the marketing and communications lead with creating messaging and content by providing them with a donor list.

This position is best held by someone in your development department who is familiar with your donors, sponsors, and supporters.

Tech lead

Tech leads manage the technology side of your Giving Day campaign. They help manage your Giving Day profile page and assist the fundraising lead in telling your story. Some of their responsibilities include:

• Helping the fundraising lead tell your nonprofit’s story through photos, font styling, and giving levels.
• Helping the supporter lead with setting up supporters’ personal fundraising pages.
• Scheduling social media posts and email messages.
• Updating your organization’s social media profiles with Giving Day graphics.
• Adding a button or badge to your nonprofit’s website about Giving Day.

This position is best held by someone who is tech-savvy. Having experience with social media and fundraising platforms is a bonus.

Supporter lead

A supporter lead will find a group of passionate supporters that will help you spread the word about your campaign. These supporters can be board members, volunteers, staff, or donors. A supporter lead’s main responsibilities include:

• Recruiting dedicated supporters to help spread the word to their personal networks.
• Training supporters on fundraising best practices with the help of the fundraising lead.
• Providing encouragement to supporters and briefing them on campaign progress regularly.
• Finding social media posts, email templates, and graphics your fundraising lead can use to promote your campaign.
• Adding offline donations such as cash or checks to your supporters’ personal campaigns.

This position is best held by a volunteer coordinator, a development associate, a board member, or a passionate volunteer. When deciding who should take this role, consider which supporters you’d like to help promote your campaign, and then choose someone who has connected with those supporters in the past.

Marketing and communications lead

Your fundraising campaign’s marketing and communications lead will determine the best methods of promoting and advertising your campaign. They may use email, social media, direct mail, events, or other methods. Their main responsibilities include:

• Working with the team lead and fundraising lead to determine the best communication channels for your nonprofit.
• Creating a communication timeline for your nonprofit and your key supporters.
• Designing email content and social media posts to advertise the campaign with the guidance of the fundraising lead.
• Creating content for supporters to promote the campaign to their personal networks.
• Assisting the tech lead with creating graphics and collecting photos and videos.
• Developing and promoting events to complement your fundraising purpose.

This position is best held by your marketing director, marketing associate, development director, development associate, executive director, or a board member who has experience creating content for various communication channels.

What if you’re working alone?

If you’re a one-person Giving Day team, we recommend reaching out to your key volunteers. Determine if any of them would be a good fit for these roles and ask them if they’d be interested in contributing to the success of your Giving Day. Consider how you’re recruiting your volunteers and keep in mind that you’ll want people on your team who connect with your nonprofit’s purpose, so choose wisely!

Check in with your Giving Day team

Once you establish the members of your Giving Day team, provide them with their list of responsibilities. Schedule regular meetings to make sure your team is on track for Giving Day, and during the day itself, check in a few times to keep your team focused!