Driving participation in giving moments

The challenge

People are highly motivated to participate in cultural moments like Giving Tuesday, but only a small percentage actively create fundraising content. We wanted to increase participation without disrupting the creator experience.

How we solved this

Research and historical data suggested that users already creating stories represented the highest-intent audience. Rather than asking people to start from scratch, we focused on reducing friction at moments when they were already creating content.

Example screens

Surfacing the right action at the moment of intent

Sticker tray

For Giving Tuesday, we featured a Donation sticker with a message prompting users to browse causes to share with their story. This strategy was designed to nudge people already creating an Instagram story to participate in Giving Tuesday.

Fundraiser selector

After deciding to add the donation sticker, users can choose which nonprofit or fundraiser they’d like to support. This screen explains how the selection works and surfaces top fundraisers based on the user’s past donation history and what’s trending.

Story composer

Users can then preview and further customize their story to supercharge their Giving Tuesday impact and encourage their followers to donate.

Content and design decisions

Why surface “Donate” as a concept?

When socially conscious users and creators on Instagram organically add fundraisers to their stories, the result is highly engaging fundraising content that drives viral loops and leads to outsized donation impact. 

Why did the timing matter?

On average, ¼ of annual dollars raised on Facebook and Instagram are donated during Giving Season (⅙ of the year). Users are motivated to participate in giving moments but may need nudging at the right time to take part in the trending moment and have an impact.

How did we balance promotion with creator autonomy?

We amplified the effectiveness of giving moments by deploying tactics that encouraged the production and consumption of fundraising stories on Instagram, while giving users options to choose which nonprofit or fundraiser to support and the appearance of their story.

Results

New Instagram tactics boosted incremental donations by $353.5K — a 4.5X increase from 2024.

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