Giving Tuesday Keeps Growing, Early Reports Say

Note: Giving Tuesday raised 27% more than last year’s event: See our updated article.

Early reports from participants in Giving Tuesday indicate that the annual day devoted to philanthropy continues to grow in its seventh year.

While the day’s organizers at New York’s 92nd Street Y crunch the numbers for release late Wednesday, reports from some online gift processors and individual charities were encouraging — and perhaps indicative of a strong fundraising finish to 2018.

Among the early results:

• Blackbaud processed $62.6 million in gifts, up from $60.9 million on Giving Tuesday 2017. The average size of contributions was up, too: $147, compared with $134 the previous year.

Best of all, says Rachel Hutchisson, Blackbaud’s vice president for corporate citizenship and philanthropy, the number of organizations that received donations was up 16 percent over last year’s event. “More organizations are sharing in this generosity, which is terrific, because that’s what Giving Tuesday is supposed to be about,” she said.

Twenty-nine percent of gifts were made on mobile devices, according to Blackbaud’s data, up 12 percent from 2017’s event. Mobile is “the tech trend that will not go away,” Hutchisson said.

• Classy processed $15.4 million from more than 128,000 donors, up from $10.2 million last year. One contribution was $100,300. Support for human services accounted for about one-third of the total raised. The gift recipient that raised the most through Classy was Camp Kesem, a Los Angeles-based charity that runs camps for children whose families have been affected by cancer. It raised nearly $1.8 million on Tuesday.
• Donors raised more than $125 million on Facebook. Facebook and PayPal together offered a $7 million match for Giving Tuesday donations and saw that match gobbled up “within seconds” after 8 a.m. Eastern time, a Facebook spokeswoman said.