Tiny Tickers is a small charity working to improve the detection, care and treatment of babies with serious heart conditions. For #GiveBack2020, the Tiny Tickers team smashed their Giving Tuesday fundraising target of £2000 and raised £6267! But how did they do it?

This Giving Tuesday, 12 babies will be born with congenital heart disease

What was your campaign for #GiveBack2020?

When the pandemic hit, we were sadly forced to pause some of our core activities, such as training sonographers and placing life-saving equipment in maternity wards. However, this did give us the opportunity to extend our family support services and, as 2020 went on, we realised this work was never more needed by our beneficiaries.

Families are dealing with their child’s heart surgery being postponed or moved to a different location, and parents are now separated during appointments and hospital stays with their child. The journey for our beneficiaries has become even more challenging than usual. Through our support work, we help these families in a number of ways.

Part of this support work involves sending support packs to parents who have just found out their baby has a serious heart condition. Starting on Giving Tuesday, we decided to add a special hug button to these packs. The hug button is a little token to let families know they are not alone because the whole heart community is here for them. By donating £10, supporters can send a family a support pack with a hug button.

Thanks to our success on Giving Tuesday, we’re able to send support packs to over 600 families!

A support pack from Tiny Tickers with a hug button

When did you start promoting your #GiveBack2020 campaign on social media?

We started talking about the appeal on our social media about a week before Giving Tuesday. It’s important to put out a few teaser posts to generate interest in the appeal, but not overdo it before the day itself.  

However, we had been planning the day behind-the-scenes months in advance. We’ve learned it’s really important to get the whole team involved as soon as possible and to have our strategy in place.

What’s special about Giving Tuesday to Tiny Tickers?

A case study shared by one of Tiny Tickers’ beneficiaries

Giving Tuesday is a really good opportunity to get everyone involved, from trustees to supporters. Our main way of communicating with our supporters is via social media and #GivingTuesday fits in really nicely with that. It’s also a fantastic chance to get creative with your campaigning.

Why should charities become a Giving Tuesday partner?

We have a great relationship with the Giving Tuesday team. They’ve always been very supportive of our Giving Tuesday appeals by sharing our posts on social media.

Tiny Tickers’ Top Tips

Link your Giving Tuesday campaign to an existing campaign. Last year, our campaign centred around our existing family support work. In 2018, we raised money to place pulse oximetry machines in hospitals, again this was an existing appeal. This way, your supporters will already know about your campaign, so they can get involved straight away.

Set a fundraising goal that your supporters can get behind. Last year our target was £2000 and we really built momentum around meeting it (and then smashing it!) during the day and afterwards. We had a ‘hug-o-meter’ (like a totaliser) on social media so everyone could see our progress.

Get your whole team involved with your Giving Tuesday strategy and make sure that everyone knows their role. Make sure you plan your campaign in advance.

Get your beneficiaries involved. We always choose a few case studies to focus on and they send us photos, videos and quotes.

Stay engaged on Giving Tuesday. Interact with your supporters on social media, try videos, Q+As, updates on your target. As our Head of Fundraising said after our 2018 campaign, ‘We didn’t just schedule and hope. We lived and breathed it.’

Keep in touch after the day. Thank supporters and show them what a difference their support has made.

A Giving Tuesday thank you from CEO Jon and his daughter Zoe

Would you like to become a Giving Tuesday partner? Sign up here!