Ultimately, we aimed to make #GivingTuesday the “Super Bowl of Philanthropy”—a day, event and movement that permeates the media and popular culture as a “must-do.”

Implementation: In phase one we conducted long-lead outreach, connected with every major broadcast affiliate and numerous contacts to uncover our media partnership with MSNBC, and created materials/messaging (fact sheet, partner toolkit, etc.) that would prove critical for outreach. In phase two, we actively pitched short leads, chased all top-tier outlets, and mined editorial calendar opportunities. In phase three, we packaged some interesting angles for media contacts we’d been in conversation with for months. We worked through Thanksgiving weekend to ensure that all requests were handled swiftly, and on #GivingTuesday, we manned media requests and secured key interviews from command central at 92Y.

Timeline: Our work stretched over three phases—from June to August, September to November, and December.

Placement: We secured nearly 432 placements for the movement and 92Y.

Scale: 6.3 billion impressions in the U.S. in the first week of December alone.

Tier 1: From 2014 to 2015, there was a 254 percent increase in the number of media placements, including long lead stories in AARP, Food Network magazine, Parade and Self. Additional placements: InStyle, Mashable, Philly.com, WWD, CNN.com, Fortune.com, Fox.com, InStyle.com, Time.com and Reuters. (CNBC, FoxBusiness.com and NBC.com picked up the Reuters story.) In years past, there were 1-2 interviews on #GivingTuesday; in 2015, we arranged almost a dozen—with CBS, HuffPost, ABCNews.com, Baltimore Sun, MSNBC, more.

Tier 2: We emphasized 92Y’s role in #GivingTuesday in top media coverage and with op-eds placed on TheHill.com and HuffPost. 92Y’s Executive Director, Henry Timms, and its Director of the Center for Innovation and Social Impact, Asha Curran, were interviewed by outlets like USA Today, MSNBC, NPR and “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”

Tier 3: On #GivingTuesday 2015, charitable giving was up to $116.7 million. There were 698,961 total donors.