🎬 What Is Giving Madness?
- A dynamic tournament featuring 16 nonprofits competing in elimination rounds
- Employees vote to advance nonprofit "teams" each round
- At the end, the campaign donation pool is split among finalists proportionate to how far they progressed
- View our Giving Madness Launch Playbook
Mission: Boost team connection, highlight corporate impact, and support worthwhile nonprofits around a fun, competitive event
🛠 Step 1: Build Your Bracket
- In your Admin panel tab, select Madness -> Brackets -> Create Bracket
- Add 16 nonprofits (see Ways to Choose Your 16 Nonprofits 👇 below)
- Set your opening Bracket Pool (we recommend between $5–15 per employee to get things started!)
- Configure bracket name and dates
- We recommend a one week bracket that starts midday on Monday and ends on a Friday with a round duration of 1 day for the highest engagement!
- Optionally enable an annual or special match for the Bracket Employee Pool
🎯 Ways to choose your 16 nonprofits:
Not sure which nonprofits to put in the lineup? 🤔 Mix and match any of these ideas:
- 📚 Start from a collection. Millie's Nonprofit Collections each feature 16+ vetted nonprofits around a unique impact theme (think Inclusivity in Sports or Black History Month). Add some or all nonprofits from a collection when you create your bracket!
- 💰 Celebrate your team's giving. Feature the top 16 nonprofits your employees already love donating to or volunteering with. Find them under Analytics, then Giving/Volunteering, filtered by nonprofit and sorted by impact amount
- 🙌 Let your ERGs choose. Have two ERGs go head-to-head in a bracket, or have each ERG at your company nominate a specific number of nonprofits into the bracket. Getting internal groups involved means more engagement (and excitement!) from the very start.
- 🗳️ Let employees nominate! Collect nominations through a survey, Slack, or an activity-feed prompt, then add the top picks. Your Customer Success Manager can help you run a nomination round, or you can check out our pre-built campaign template here!
- 🤝 Highlight your partners. Add nonprofits from your dashboard's Nonprofits We Love list or ones your company partners with directly.
🗳 Step 2: Launch & Promote
- Select your Launch Date, plan your comms, and get your team excited
- Share voting reminders automatically via Millie’s embedded email and, and Slack alerts
- Use Millie’s ready-to-go playbook assets to boost participation and awareness:
- Explainer docs, design templates, and sharable graphics Notion
📊 Step 3: Engage & Monitor
- Employees vote to advance nonprofits across 4 bracket rounds
- Track engagement and donations in real time through the bracket analytics dashboard
- Promote via Millie’s native Slack integration or email announcements to share round updates and encourage votes
🎉 Step 4: Close & Celebrate
- At tournament's end, funds are automatically distributed across all nonprofits based on their final standing. (Remember, everyone wins!)
- Share results and highlight impact across team channels and dashboards
- Want to make it extra-special? Time the end of the bracket with an all-company event or all-hands announcement!
🎟️ Running an entry-fee (”pay to play”) bracket
Employees never have to pay to vote in Giving Madness, but they're always welcome to add to the pool! 💸 Some companies lean into this with an entry-fee format, like "donate $5 to join the bracket." Here are two fun ways to set it up:
- 🏀 Giving Madness with employee contributions. Fund a starting pool, then invite employees to chip in a suggested amount (for example, $5) when they join. Every dollar employees add grows the pool and is split among all 16 nonprofits by how far they advance.
- ⚽ A campaign tied to an outside bracket. For sports brackets like the World Cup or fantasy football, run the bracket on another site and create a Millie donation campaign as the entry fee. Employees donate $5 to a nonprofit of their choice to enter, and at the end the company sends a prize donation to the winner's favorite nonprofit. 🏆
- Check out Millie’s pre-built campaign template here for inspiration!
💜 Matching: if matching is turned on for a Giving Madness bracket, employee donations to the pool are approved automatically.
📅 Inspiration Moment:utting remaining annual budgets to work
Have some match or giving budget left at the end of the year? 🎁 A year-end bracket is a fun way to let your whole team decide where it goes!
- 🔍 Check what's left. Use the Analytics to see your remaining budget.
- 💰 Make it the donation pool. Fund the bracket's pool with some or all of what's left.
- 🎄 Time it for the holidays. Run a one-week bracket in December and crown your champion at your end-of-year meeting!
- 📣 Tell the story. Share how the year's unused funds became a company-wide vote for the causes your team loves most.
📈 Running Giving Madness: The Full Playbook
Access a comprehensive guide loaded with step-by-step instructions, promotional email templates, slide decks, Slack banners, visual assets, and more:
➡️ [View the Giving Madness Launch Playbook] Notion
- Bracket Analytics Dashboard — track engagement, votes, and donations
- Campaign Setup Tips — learn best practices for bracket structure and naming
- Budget & Matching Guides — configure campaign-specific funds and match rules
- Slack for Events — amplify bracket moments and voting reminders in Slack
