GivingTuesday 2024 was record-setting for many nonprofits and community campaigns across the globe. In the U.S. alone, over 36 million people participated in a GivingTuesday campaign, resulting in millions of volunteer hours and $3.6 billion being donated to a variety of causes. These participation numbers show a significant increase from the previous year, highlighting the powerful impact of generosity in all its forms.
For Partridge Creek Farm, 2024 marked a particularly successful year. The Ishpeming, MI nonprofit was founded in 2013 to provide food access and education with the goal of connecting communities and their food sources. Over the years, they’ve established programs like the Farm to School Institute and created robust community gardens which harvested 2,000 lbs of food in 2023.
Ahead of their first GivingTuesday, they set a base goal of raising $5,000 to support the purchase of the land the Ishpeming Community Garden sits on, ensuring access to the site for generations to come. Flash forward to the day after GivingTuesday—it was official—Partridge Creek Farm had exceeded their goal.
We interviewed Sara Johnson, Executive Director of Partridge Creek Farm, to learn more about their GivingTuesday experience and share insights you can apply to your own campaigns.
When did you first hear about GivingTuesday, and what made you want to host your own campaign?
I’m fortunate to live in a small community where we all tend to support each other, so small fundraisers, GivingTuesday, Spread Goodness Day, and even Plaidurday are regular celebrations.
This past year was my first time leading GivingTuesday for Partridge Creek Farm. To prepare, I worked closely with a mentor of mine and attended a webinar hosted by Catchafire. The webinar was very informative, and I took the opportunity to work with a Catchafire volunteer to help us dial in our messaging.
You had such a successful GivingTuesday last year! How has that impacted your work at Partridge Creek Farm?
We were very fortunate to achieve both our base goal and stretchgoal in our 2024 GivingTuesday campaign. Our base goal of $5,000 would allow us to purchase the land that one of our Community Gardens sits on. The land had been leased to us for over a decade at no cost. The landowner was looking to sell the land and wanted to see it go to us for a very reasonable price.
Currently, we do not generate any revenue from our garden sites, so to make this happen we turned to our community to ask for help. Any funds raised over the base goal would go towards repairs and maintenance, including upgrading the 10+ year old garden beds, installing a new fence, and investing in tools for our garden members.
I’m thrilled to report that we are closing on the sale of the property at the end of February, ensuring Partridge Creek Farm will own this small parcel of land, securing it as a long-term food access point for our community for generations to come! We also purchased new garden beds that will replace some of the beds this spring. Additional updates are underway, and we hope to complete most of the work this year. We are incredibly grateful to our community for making this possible!
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How are you currently making an impact in your community?
Partridge Creek Farm seeks to provide food access to Ishpeming, a rural town where fresh, affordable food is scarce. In this area, 90% of food is imported and 80% of youth qualify for free or reduced meals. Initially, the way we achieved this goal was to grow food for our community using various community gardens we created. Three years ago, we broke ground on the Partridge Creek Community Farm, a 3.75 acre farm in the middle of downtown.
We have slowly been transitioning our food production to this farm site, meaning our community garden spaces are now available to community members. We currently rent 25 raised beds to various community members annually. These members have become very protective and proud of this space. Seeing them form relationships, work together to maintain the space, and create dishes to share with each other shows the power food has to bring people together.
We are committed to investing in this space for them so they can continue to support themselves and our community by creating a resilient, hyper-local food system.
How did you engage with donors and volunteers ahead of GivingTuesday?
There were three key elements to our strategy that proved very helpful:
1. Clear messaging
2. Content created ahead of time
3. Storytelling directly from garden members that sings their personal experiences
We worked with a Catchafire volunteer who helped dial in our message and tailor it for various audiences and platforms. For example, we crafted messaging for our staff and board members, equipping them with talking points and statistics so we were aligned. We also started creating content in September, when the garden was in full bloom, to show it’s “good side” so-to-speak. We then held interviews with staff and garden members to have them explain what the community garden meant to them. After that, we used email and social media to share these stories, incorporating statistics from our annual garden member survey.
We started promoting GivingTuesday at the beginning of November by informing folks about our campaign, its goal, and why it’s important. We did not start asking for donations until a week before GivingTuesday. We were able to raise $1,000 before the day, and the rest came the day of!
What worked well, and what would you do your next GivingTuesday differently?
Planning ahead and capturing content at peak season was smart. The garden would have otherwise been covered in snow and closed down for the season by the time GivingTuesday rolled around.
Including personal stories from our staff and garden members proved to be highly compelling. Hearing directly from the community members who benefit from this program is powerful. Our staff was also encouraged to reach out to their personal networks which brought in a bunch of new donors from across the country!
Another major support was our marketing funnels. We launched a new website last year, which allowed us to quickly and easily provide up-to-date information, as well as utilizing Mailchimp for our email marketing. Having these established channels allowed us to spend more time on creativity than simply disseminating our message. The only thing I would do differently next year is to set our goal higher! 🙂
Any unexpected challenges? How did you overcome them?
Our team navigated challenges fairly smoothly. There were a lot of last-minute things that popped up the day of GivingTuesday. For example, we had a long-time donor unexpectedly offer a match. Our team was quick to use our marketing channels to relay this information via email and social media. We were also able to capture day-of happenings and share them via social media. We had one donor closely following our campaign who made a donation just before midnight to ensure we hit our goal and maximised our match opportunity.
By keeping our audience informed in real time, it created fun interactions. It felt like we had a whole community cheering us on!
How will Partridge Creek Farm continue the momentum after GivingTuesday?
We implemented a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system last year that allows us to better track our donors. We want to keep everyone who donated to our GivingTuesday campaign informed by sharing milestones as they happen in real time. I think it’s important for them to see their dollars at work and the difference they make. Sharing this story makes them feel directly connected to our success and shows the impact of their generosity.
I tell my team, “heads down and let the work speak for itself.” Doing the work is half of it, the other half is storytelling. It’s easy to share our story when we are proud of what we’re doing. And people want to support that kind of thing.
We know it’s several months away, but what can we expect for GivingTuesday 2025 on Dec. 2?
This is a great question! As a community-driven nonprofit, we let our community decide what they need. Having a very specific, clear ask tends to work well for GivingTuesday. I’m excited to get the 2025 growing season underway and see what kinds of needs bubble up.
We have a very talented team and good systems that enable us to be incredibly responsive, execute with finesse, and have fun while making it happen.
You’ll have to follow us to see what we come up with!
