Maximizing Impact on Giving Days: DAF Day, GivingTuesday & More
June 24, 2025
Giving Days offer powerful moments to activate donors and amplify your organization’s visibility. Myriad USA recently hosted a webinar on Maximizing Impact on Giving Days: DAF Day, GivingTuesday & More, offering practical insights and strategies to make the most of high-impact fundraising days like GivingTuesday and DAF Day through strategic planning, smart storytelling, and data-informed donor engagement.
Moderated by Madiha Ahmed, Associate Vice President, Digital Integration, Faircom New York, this session featured practical insights and case studies from Victoria Leonhardt, Senior Manager, US & CA Hub, GivingTuesday and Stephanie Zadora, Operations and Programs Director, Native Ways Federation.
Read the highlights below for the key takeaways and watch the entire session recording here.
Grounding Campaigns in Purpose and Community
The most successful Giving Day campaigns begin with a clear purpose. For the Native Ways Federation, for example, launching Native Nonprofit Day meant anchoring the campaign in values of visibility, equity, and community. They started small—with a PDF toolkit and a clear mission—and grew by building trust, sharing data, and leaning on networks.
Redefining Success
Success isn’t just about money. It’s about participation, visibility, and community engagement. For some, it’s the number of nonprofits engaged. For others, it’s the growth of a donor list or the reach of a message. What matters is defining your own metrics and using them to guide your strategy.
Expanding Reach with DAF Day
DAF Day, a newer initiative, focuses on unlocking donor-advised funds (DAFs), a growing but underutilized source of charitable giving. Organizations that participated use the day to educate donors, simplify giving processes, and highlight impact. With over $230 billion in DAFs nationwide, this strategy offers high potential for long-term, high-value donor engagement.
From One-Off Events to Year-Round Engagement
Giving Days offer opportunities to deepen donor relationships, community building, and sustained momentum throughout the year. Thank-you messages, donor surveys, and year-round touchpoints help turn one-time donors into long-term supporters. GivingTuesday is also a top day for acquiring recurring donors, making it a prime moment to build sustainable giving by planning stewardship from the start, such as sending quarterly impact updates or inviting donors to volunteer.
By focusing on relationships and preparing with intention, nonprofits can turn a single day of giving into year-round opportunities for donor engagement and turn one-time gifts into lasting support.
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This webinar is part of the Myriad USA series on Sharing Best Practices in Fundraising, designed to help nonprofit professionals worldwide enhance their fundraising practices and strategies. With Myriad USA, donors can count on a knowledgeable, one-stop shop for all their international giving, regardless of geographic location. We also provide foreign nonprofits with cost-effective solutions to mobilize resources in the United States. Discover our services at myriadusa.org/services/.
Speakers
Faircom New York
Madiha Ahmed Watson serves as Associate Vice President of Digital Integration at Faircom New York, where she leads comprehensive digital fundraising strategies for nonprofit clients. A results-driven digital strategist with over a decade of experience, Madiha excels at accelerating client growth through innovative fundraising campaigns and integrated marketing approaches. At Faircom, Madiha directs cross-functional teams across creative, analytics, and development to deliver cohesive omnichannel campaigns that consistently drive measurable impact and sustainable revenue growth. Her expertise in identifying untapped opportunities, optimizing supporter journeys, and leveraging data analytics enables her clients to achieve their organizational goals through supporter-centric approaches.
GivingTuesday
Victoria Leonhardt supports U.S.-based Community Campaign Leaders in the GivingTuesday movement, helping them collaborate, mobilize networks, and drive local impact. Before joining GivingTuesday in 2022, she coordinated the regional GivingTuesday campaign, Give906. With over a decade of nonprofit experience, she specializes in capacity building, strategic planning, civic engagement, and volunteer recruitment. Victoria holds a Marketing degree from Northern Michigan University, a Certified Nonprofit Professional credential, and is an alumna of the American Express Leadership Academy.
Native Ways Federation
Stephanie Zadora (she/her) is a citizen of the Seneca Nation (wolf clan) and the Operations and Programs Director at Native Ways Federation. Founded by national, Native-led nonprofits, Native Ways Federation’s mission is to activate and expand informed giving to Native nonprofits in Indian Country through donor education and advocacy. Stephanie has developed the organization’s infrastructure and strategy, and programming for foundations, allies, and Native-led nonprofits – including Native Nonprofit Day, #GiveNative on Giving Tuesday, the Native Nonprofit List, and the On Our Terms Report. Stephanie serves on the board of the Indigenous Lacrosse Alliance and coaches at their annual youth Lax-4-Life camp, a collaboration of the Fond du Lac Band’s Brookston Community Center.