Giving Day Livestreaming in 2025: Still Relevant?

Nine years ago this summer, I sat in a conference room with the marketing team at the Community Foundation of Louisville and had the single biggest 'lightbulb' moment of my career:

Community-wide, 24-hour fundraising events called 'giving days' -- especially Give for Good Louisville -- are an absolutely perfect match for livestreaming social video.

That one meeting changed the course of my entire career -- and in many ways, I think, helped shape the next decade of the entire giving day industry.

Running around with a microphone and a script in Louisville in 2016 -- a dramatically different look than what my giving days feel like now in 2025.

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It was less than a year prior to that 2016 meeting that Facebook had debuted what would soon become 'Facebook Live' -- a then-novel concept, playing off of the momentum at that time of third-party apps like Periscope and Meerkat. Facebook Live was introduced gradually, with only celebrities getting access off the bat -- but by the end of January 2016, Facebook opened up the feature to all users.

And in the 20-ish-year history of Facebook -- still, by a wide margin, the unquestioned titan of the social media sector -- the introduction of Facebook Live is one of its most critical seminal moments.

The social media industry was a lot different back then -- in large part due to the massive, sudden proliferation of live video. Humans who powered some of the world's biggest brands, and consultants who lent those brand teams their expertise and charisma, were suddenly invigorated by a mass adoption of one-to-many human interactivity, with social media conferences benefiting from the (pre-pandemic) wave of people wanting to interact with other people they'd met through this new tech. Brave pioneers at Periscope and Meerkat gradually got squashed by the economy of scale of the industry's oligarchs at Facebook, and eventually YouTube and Twitter.

Before creators could iterate and perfect their approaches, audiences were drawn by the novelty of the medium itself. Seeing someone -- or a brand -- broadcasting live was 'cool,' especially when you could comment along and get the attention of that broadcaster. Early adapters saw significant audience growth as viewers craved that live experience.

It was in this early adaption stage that the Community Foundation of Louisville entered the livestreaming game. Though a scheduling conflict caused me to miss Give for Good Louisville 2016, I joined the CFL team in September 2017 to livestream their giving day from in and around the Kentuckiana region. It was an obviously imperfect experiment, a learning experience -- and a concept that would set the tone for other giving days around the United States for years to come.

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Give for Good Louisville was one of the first giving days to experiment with livestreaming video, but it would be far from the last. In 2017 and 2018, team members from GiveGab (now known as Bonterra) were on the ground in Louisville with us and saw how the CFL team was boldly approaching using live video to share stories of the day itself and the nonprofits that make the day possible. And as Louisville's livestream experiment grew -- so did the day's fundraising yield. In 2017, the first year of its livestream, Give for Good Louisville raised $4.6 million. By 2019, that total jumped to a whopping $6.88 million.

It's an impossible question, but if you asked me to pick a favorite giving day I've ever produced, it might still be Give for Good Louisville 2019 -- one of the last giving days I produced before the pandemic hit the following spring.

I was asked by the team at GivingTuesday to write a blog on how other giving days could leverage livestreaming. I contributed a guest blog about nonprofits' biggest misconceptions about livestreaming to GiveGab's primary competitor, Mightycause. I spoke about giving days at a summertime conference for Neon One (another GiveGab competitor) -- and in 2023, Neon One even hired me full-time to run their social media and video strategies.

By this point, the industry had taken notice. Scott McAninch, CEO of The Nonprofit Council in San Antonio, had visited Louisville to observe the giving day in 2018, and left knowing that their giving day, The Big Give, needed a livestream component of its own the following year. The Big Give would become my second of many more giving day partner clients to come.

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While the timeline of live social video really kicked off with the introduction of Facebook Live in early 2016 -- the whole multiverse was thrown into disarray when the pandemic hit in spring of 2020. Giving days that had relied largely on block parties and in-person celebrations were forced to pivot 180 degrees. Give Local York, in York PA, had always been known as one of the most fun -- and most successful, especially for its community size -- giving days in America. With their date locked in as the First Friday in May 2020, Meagan Given was one of the very first giving day leaders in America forced to turn her giving day entirely virtual.

Suddenly, the importance of livestreaming video changed entirely. Meagan courageously pushed forward with our idea of a full-day livestream, with her producer suddenly stranded in South Carolina, 750 miles away from all her participating organizations in York.

The result? What one longtime local newspaper columnist called 'among the pivotal moments in York history.' The giving day went from a potential total wash to an astonishing success -- with audiences stuck in their own homes, the livestream became that coveted second space where they could coalesce, embrace their community leaders and directly show support through their comments -- and, more critically, their donations.

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I continued to expand my giving day portfolio in the early 2020s, with a cautious mix of virtual production combined with returns to in-person activities. All the while, livestreaming technology improved, and as more IRL engagements returned to the calendar, I gradually acquired more and more heavy equipment designed to dramatically improve the quality of the broadcasts I was producing. Livestream call-ins -- once practically unimaginable in the era of massive giving day parties -- became part of the modus operandi.

Between virtual and in-person engagements, this spring of 2025 brought me to my 38th, 39th and 40th career giving day productions. The novelty aspect of the livestream has mostly worn off, and many others have sensibly joined the production ranks. I've partnered with giving days that hire full teams to manage their livestreams -- the statewide giving day in New Hampshire, NH Gives, and Northeast PA's amazing event, NEPA Gives, each worked with me once but since rely on their own locally based, large production squads. Other giving days valiantly attempt to produce their own livestreams in-house, to varying degrees of success.

Giving days come and go. I was very honored to be a part of the final #RVGives in Roanoke Valley, VA, in the spring of 2021.

But in 2025, what I'm examining the hardest is the purpose of these livestreams: in this TikTok-ified new era -- post-novelty, and post-COVID -- does producing a livestream still make sense?

Absolutely, yes.

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One of the most important tasks I do as 'The Giving Day Guy' is done days after I've left their town -- I produce a livestream viewership report for each client. Data matters a lot, and I love walking through these reports with my clients -- in fact, I have one such call coming up later this morning. We track all the stats you'd expect: views, impressions, average view time and much more.

A big benefit of working with me year over year is the ability to compare numbers from giving day to giving day -- I have accumulated eight years now of data from the Give for Good Louisville livestreams alone. Even as the social video space has become more and more flooded, and the competition for eyeballs becomes more intense, I can back up the narrative that people value these livestreams with viewership data that tells the story much better than I can.

I don't want to be ambigious about this at all: the data matters. The views matter. And the momentum in that data, one way or another, year over year, of course matters.

But let me also be super clear about this: it's not the only thing that matters.

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Giving days are not your typical fundraising event -- they never have been, and they never will be. (For the purpose of this conversation, by the way, I'm speaking almost exclusively about community-based giving days; I don't have much experience with University giving days, at least yet, though they are both awesome and important; and cause-based days, though also very important, are a little bit different in their ethos.)

Giving days provide an opportunity for the community to come together in ways that are just not possible the other 364 days of the year. With hundreds, and sometimes more than 1000+, nonprofits all fundraising and making the ask simultaneously, it's exceptionally important that the central organization behind all of that provide some substance to the central giving day brand. And, although it's certainly not the ONLY way to do that, a livestream is an absolutely perfect approach to achieve that goal.

Imagine you're a common man living in St. Louis. You've never heard of Give STL Day before. But now, your favorite nonprofit -- let's say, the shelter where you recently adopted your new pit bull -- is telling you to support them on Give STL Day this year. Uh, okay? What's Give STL Day?

Sure, you can Google it and read an AI-generated description of the day. But man, what if you want to learn more?

The team at Even Chance Pitbull Rescue in St. Louis also posted on their social media that they'll be featured on the official Give STL Day livestream at 7:27 am. Oh cool! Let me check that out before I head into work ...

Suddenly, instead of simply writing a check to support the group, you're introduced immediately to the energy eminating from the St. Louis Community Foundation offices. You go back and re-watch this entire hour of livestreamed video -- you had maybe heard about the Great Rivers Greenway before, but didn't really know what they're about? And man, UCP Heartland also sounds like a great organization to support -- and I can donate to them, too?

Short of inviting everyone in St. Louis down to your office party, an official livestream, done right, is going to be the single best way to tell the stories of what really makes your giving day special -- the nonprofits.

Let's talk for a minute about them, though, too ...

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Livestreams done correctly, with the right strategy and energy, are a wonderful introduction to the giving day for a viewer. But having been on the ground for dozens and dozens of them, now, I can tell you -- they're even better for the nonprofits.

Community giving days are the great equalizer -- and done correctly, your giving day livestream is the great equalizer, too. Over eight-plus years now of refining a true strategic planning approach, I've come to realize how much every single minute, and every single moment, of these videos matters -- especially to the smaller organizations.

Perhaps the single best example of this that I've witnessed is Building Bridges for Brianna, in York, Pa. Several years ago, Matt Dorgan tragically lost his daughter, Brianna, to suicide. This news would absolutely wreck 100 out of 100 fathers. But from that emotional wreckage, Matt Dorgan decided he never wanted another parent to go through that same experience. From that place of unimaginable grief, Building Bridges for Brianna was born.

I've helped produce more than 300 hours of livestreaming video in 8-plus years, but every segment we create with Matt and the team at Building Bridges for Brianna is an extremely stark reminder of exactly why I do what I do -- to make a difference in local communities, and to change and potentially even save lives.

My broader point here is this: done correctly, and with the right energy, a giving day livestream provides support, provides reassurance, provides a canvas for all of your participating nonprofits to feel empowered; to feel validated; to feel like the work that THEY do matters. The time and energy from the central organization during a giving day is exceptionally scarce. The giving day leaders that I work with appreciate how I am able to represent their very best efforts while they are scrambling to do the behind-the-scenes work to make the day tick.

And while Facebook tries this year to erase memories of livestreams gone by, the reality is, both the content and the memories do live on forever. I am working hard this year on being better at repurposing my own livestream content into Shorts, Reels and other digestible-length content -- you can see a lot of it now on my Instagram, www.instagram.com/givingdayguy . There is always going to be more work to be done to keep up with the tide of social media, but for the nonprofit sector, the livestreaming work we've done with 40 partner days over the years has been groundbreaking. Other giving days try to mimic what we do -- and many of them do a tremendous job! -- but there's still nothing like the original. And I've long told every client I've ever worked with that the most important thing that I can do, year after year, is continue to innovate -- I am committed to continuing to make what I do better, year after year after year.

I'm looking for more giving days to partner with in 2025 and 2026, and this is your sign to reach out to me -- chrisstrub at gmail dot com -- to make it happen. Talk to you soon.

Chris Strub is 'The Giving Day Guy,' and has worked with 40 different giving days since September 2017. He'd love to work with your giving day this year, next year and many years to come. Find more from Chris on social media, @ChrisStrub.