People gave an estimated $274 million to charitable causes online this Giving Tuesday, with more than 2 million digital donations processed — the largest outpouring ever for the event.
The numbers far exceed the $177 million raised last year on Giving Tuesday.
The numbers this year come from 37 websites. The 92nd Street Y, the group that launched the first national day of philanthropy in 2012 with the United Nations Foundation, collected the data.
There’s no central repository for Giving Tuesday donation totals.
Fewer online-donation platforms reported data in 2016 than this year. The 92nd Street Y plans to continue adding more fundraising sites to arrive at its giving totals each year, said Asha Curran, chief innovation officer and the director of the Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact at 92nd Street Y.
Here’s what some companies that process online donations reported: —
- Blackbaud, a company that provides fundraising software to many of the nation’s charities, processed $60.9 million in donations yesterday, up 28 percent from Giving Tuesday in 2016. More than 7,200 organizations received online contributions through Blackbaud on Tuesday —— roughly 8 percent more than last year.
- PayPal users donated $64 million, a 33 percent increase over last year. More than 715,000 people donated through the site — a 30 percent jump from last year. from 2016.
- GlobalGiving, a website that matches donors with local, grass-roots projects, saw $1.25 million in donations — the second largest day of online giving in its 15-year history. The effort fell behind last year’s Giving Tuesday drive, which brought in $1.7 million, but was buoyed by matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Nearly 12 percent of donations to GlobalGiving this year went to nonprofits working on relief efforts in areas stuck by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
- Classy, a fundraising-technology website, said donations grew 58 percent over 2016, to $10.2 million — though that is largely because more charities are conducting campaigns on the site. Human-service groups collected the most donations, bringing in $2.7 million.
- GiveCampus, a company that helps nearly 400 educational institutions collect contributions online, reported that Giving Tuesday donations jumped 48 percent, to $3.27 million.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated incorrectly the number of educational institutions that GiveCampus collects money for online.
