Marie Curie look back on thanking their volunteers for #GivingTuesday 2017, and anticipate to reach even more supporters with their #GivingTuesday thankathon this year.
Marie Curie has been involved with #GivingTuesday in the UK since the beginning back in 2014. We signed up as one of the founding partners of the campaign and couldn’t wait to shout about #GivingTuesday. We assumed that most charities would be asking for money directly. So, we wanted to use this opportunity to coordinate a nationwide thanking day to “give thanks” to all the wonderful people who support us year on year.
By focusing on giving thanks rather than a straight ask, we hoped to stand out from the crowd, surprise and delight our supporters and provide an opportunity for staff to connect on a deeper level with our cause, volunteers, and amazing fundraisers.
In 2017, we wanted to extend the ways our staff members could get involved regardless of how much or little time they had to give. So we offered four easy options: give up your time to write personalised letters of thanks to our supporters, participate at one of our Christmas Collections, donate some pre-loved items to our shops or donate a tweet of thanks to a fundraiser.
The day was a massive success for us with our staff writing over 2,000 hand-written cards to some of our most outstanding supporters of 2017. Morgan Stanley, one of our Corporate partners in Scotland, kindly wrote 200 cards on our behalf and pledged to write even more in 2018, which is incredible! We also created personalised doodles for our Celebrity Ambassadors which we posted on Twitter with a thank you message. Excitingly, we also raised $6,911 through Facebook Donate as part of #GivingTuesday 2017.
Over the past 4 years, more than 6,000 of Marie Curie’s fantastic fundraisers have received a personalised hand-written thank you card from a staff member taking part in #GivingTuesday activities. We love taking this opportunity to simply say thank you and are even planning more Thankathon type events throughout the year.
#GivingTuesday 2018 promises to be another massive success with even more thanking, doodling and corporate involvement planned! We cannot wait to get started.
