Give back more effectively with Braze Charitable-Giving Canvas templates

TL;DR

To better support businesses as they use messaging to raise money for nonprofits and other altruistic causes, Braze has released major updates to its Charitable-Giving Canvas templates. These updates make it easier for brands to encourage donations and provide material support to the causes that matter to their audiences.

Key takeaways

• Braze launched its Charitable-Giving Canvas templates in 2025
• Braze significantly updated the templates this year to expand how brands can use them to drive donations to nonprofits
• The templates are highly customizable, allowing marketers to craft a messaging flow that fits their specific needs, but also support quick launches when needed

The final months of the year ask more of everyone: Shoppers are stretched thin, nonprofits see the numbers of people they serve rise, and marketers are buried in campaigns for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and every promotion in between. It's easy for giving back to take a back seat. But brands that prioritize it tend to find it pays off twice: Nonprofits get support when they need it most, and customers gain another reason to like and respect a company they already engage with. Braze Charitable-Giving Canvas templates can help to support this effort, and with Giving Tuesday right around the corner, now's the time to put them to work.

Braze was built on the belief that engagement should never come at the expense of care—for customers, for communities, and for the causes that need support most. Giving back at scale is part of our own DNA, through our ESG commitments and the Braze for Social Impact Fund, and we built these templates because we wanted every customer to have the same easy on-ramp to generosity that we try to build into our own business. When you use them this Giving Tuesday, you're not just running a campaign, you're joining us in supporting organizations that do good around the world.

What are Canvas templates?

Nobody wants to build a giving campaign from scratch during the busiest stretch of the year. Canvas templates give you a complete, pre-built journey framework you can easily customize instead of starting from a blank slate.

"Braze Canvas templates have truly transformed the way we work at Overstock. Their straightforward setup and editing capabilities have simplified and significantly streamlined our processes. By eliminating the need to start each email from scratch, our team can now dedicate more time to other projects. These templates have been a game-changer, boosting our team's efficiency and accuracy."

Nicole Ruffner

Campaign Automation Manager, Beyond Inc., Overstock

Canvas templates handle the key elements of your messaging flow—the branching logic, the timing, the channels and channel routing—so you can spend your time crafting what differentiates your campaign: The message, the cause, and the connection it has to your customers. For charitable giving campaigns in particular, that trade-off matters. These campaigns have a specific emotional tone to hit, and a diverse audience to reach. A template that gets it right when it comes to the framework of your customer journey allows you to focus on the heart of your campaign.

How to use the new and improved Canvas template

To make using this key tool easier for marketers, we’ve rebuilt the Charitable-Giving Canvas template from the ground up. The updated version provides brands with a sharper structure and richer built-in content, so you can move from setup to sharing and giving back without extra steps.

A cleaner structure, two campaign paths

The new template opens with a single decision point: What kind of giving campaign are you running—donation matching, or a percent of proceeds shared? From there, users are routed into one of two fully built-out journeys:

• Donation matching: For brands pledging to match customer contributions dollar-for-dollar (or any ratio) to a nonprofit partner
• Percentage of proceeds: For brands donating a portion of sales to a charitable cause

Email and SMS: Ready to customize

Each campaign path includes pre-written email and SMS message templates that can serve as inspiration or as a starting point when drafting your own copy. The emails come with subject lines, preheader text, and body content already created around common charitable giving scenarios like countdown messaging, impact-driven reminders, and urgency-building final-push sends. The SMS messages are written with the same arc in mind, just tightened to fit the needs of that specific channel.

Swap in your brand's visuals, update the charity partner details, and adjust the tone without touching a line of code.

Channel preference routing

Audiences aren't one-size-fits-all, and neither is this template. Built-in audience path steps check each user's channel preference before sending, routing SMS-preferred users to the SMS message and everyone else to email. This happens automatically at each touchpoint in the journey.

Getting Started

To access the new template:

1. Log into your Braze dashboard and navigate to Canvas.
2. Select Create Canvas > Use a Template and search for "Charitable Giving"
3. Choose the template, then review the two campaign paths: Donation matching and percentage of proceeds
4. Customize the pre-built message content: Update the charity partner, swap in your brand visuals, and adjust the copy to match your voice.
5. Review your delay steps and update the timing to align with your campaign dates.
6. Set your audience entry criteria, confirm your delivery settings, launch and watch your giving campaign come to life!

New to Canvas? The Canvas templates course in Braze Learning walks you through the fundamentals before you dive in.

Best practices for building an impactful giving campaign

The Canvas template handles the structure. But what makes a giving campaign impactful is the intention behind it. Here’s how to keep your mission loud and clear through every step of the journey.

Start with a story. Powerful giving campaigns don’t start with “We’re donating 10% of proceeds…” They begin with what matters: The mission, and how it uplifts your community. Lead with the heart of the campaign, and why it’s woven into your brand’s values. Imagine a company like fictional cookware brand Kitchenerie partnering with a food security nonprofit for Giving Tuesday. Their kickoff email leads with a photo of a family sitting down to a meal and a simple line: "Every order this week helps put food on someone else's table."

Meet people where they are. A giving campaign is a moment of connection, so consider each user’s preferred channel to connect on. The template automatically routes SMS-preferred users to text and everyone else to email; Some customers will want the intimacy of a text, others will want the space to read and absorb. Let the channel match the moment rather than defaulting to one-size-fits-all sends.

Use urgency with care. Countdown timers and "last chance" messaging work (they're in this template for a reason). But in the context of a charitable campaign, urgency can tip easily from motivating to pressuring. The most effective approach ties the deadline to something meaningful: "Three days left to double your impact" lands differently than "Offer ends soon." Let the cause do the work, and use timing to amplify it.

Close the loop. The campaign doesn't end at the last send. A post-campaign message that shares the real-world impact of the donations raised (meals provided, trees planted, families support) and a genuine thank-you to customers who donate is one of the most memorable things you can send all year. It reinforces the emotional connection, gives customers something to feel good about, and sets the stage for them to show up again next year. Build it into the Canvas before you launch—it's easy to skip when you're wrapping up, and too important to miss.The holidays are just around the corner, and with it comes Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and a dozen other moments all competing for the same inbox real estate. Giving Tuesday is your chance to stand out by showing up differently: Not with a discount, but with a reason for customers to feel good about their relationship with your brand.

Ready to give back this Giving Tuesday?

Charitable giving campaigns don't have to be a last-minute scramble or a project that gets deprioritized in favor of a bigger end of year promotion. With the new Charitable-Giving Canvas template, the infrastructure is already there. You just bring the cause and the creativity.

Whether you're matching donations, giving a percentage of proceeds, or running both, this template gives you everything you need to launch a campaign that's on-brand, on-time, and genuinely meaningful. We can't wait to see what you build with it.