Giving Tuesday? More Like Gimmick Tuesday, Some Small Nonprofits Say

DC Central Kitchen

For two consecutive years, DC Central Kitchen put significant effort into its Giving Tuesday campaign. Staff members focused on engaging their more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook.

They found a matching donor and asked their network of around 15,000 volunteers to drum up energy online. Throughout the day itself, their full-time fundraisers, digital-media specialist, and communications director were tasked with “messaging the heck out of it,” says Alex Moore, chief development officer of the $13 million organization.

But at the end of the day, DC Central Kitchen didn’t have a lot to show for the hustle.

While there was an increase in the number of donations on Giving Tuesday in 2013 and 2014, average gift size was roughly half that on the days immediately before and after. Donations shrank from between $350 and $450 to the $150 to $200 range.

This year, the charity will skip the event.

“As a sector, we’re afraid to look at the opportunity costs of going along with the latest trend and the latest gimmick,” says Mr. Moore, whose group brought in a total of $8,500 during the giving day.

A Tsunami of Tweets

As the Giving Tuesday movement gathers momentum heading into its fourth year, some smaller charities aren’t buying into what they describe as “hype.”

They worry their messages will be lost in the tsunami of tweets and flooded donors’ email inboxes. They are turned off by what they see as nonprofit groupthink and the pressure to hop on board just because. And some groups, like DC Central Kitchen, say it just hasn’t been worthwhile when considering the level of donations they get for the effort.

“Sure, it’s a chance to ride the coattails of a larger effort and increase your exposure,” says Mr. Moore. “But it creates a sense of obligation where people don’t want to be the one organization that’s left out and they don’t want to accidentally leave anything on the table.”

DC Central Kitchen

DC Central Kitchen’s year-end fundraising efforts will still feature lots of online engagement, attempts to pitch stories to the news media, direct mail, and matching campaigns. But it plans to treat December 1 like any other day during the crucial season.

“I think it’s more important for us to keep the conversation going about the issues that we’re working on without causing a needless break to hitch our wagon to something different,” he says. “In our experience, it actually just creates more noise.”

That’s an unpopular perspective among boosters of Giving Tuesday, who argue that any organization stands to benefit.

“Who shouldn’t do it?” says Eileen Heisman, president of the National Philanthropic Trust, one of the founding partners of the event. “The scrooges of the world.”

Giving Tuesday’s founders say the campaigns should be integrated with the rest of an organization’s year-end communications and complement rather than compete with what groups are already doing.

They also stress that the day’s success shouldn’t be measured by dollars alone. Organizations can benefit by promoting volunteerism, raising awareness about their cause, or using the day as an opportunity to thank existing donors for their gifts, without necessarily overburdening their staffs.

Fears About Diluting Gift Size

Access Youth Academy, a San Diego nonprofit with an $800,000 budget that aims to transform the lives of disadvantaged youths through the sport of squash, will not participate this year. The reason: concern that the event dilutes the size of gifts.

In 2012, the nonprofit participated in the San Diego Foundation’s giveBIG, a regional giving day, which Ryan Ginard, the group’s development director says was “more meaningful” because it was localized and groups received marketing support from the community fund. The charity brought in close to $8,000 during the regional giving day, as opposed to $2,050 on Giving Tuesday 2014, the first year it participated.

On Giving Tuesday this year, Mr. Ginard plans to prioritize two meetings with current donors to discuss $5,000 gifts for student scholarships. And a local foundation has offered Access Youth Academy a matching $30,000 and giving the group an extended time to match the funds, as opposed to a one-day push.

Michael Rosen, president of fundraising consulting firm ML Innovations, has his doubts about whether the day benefits the nonprofit world as a whole and or even some charities individually.

“There’s absolutely zero evidence that Giving Tuesday has any appreciable impact on philanthropy or the nonprofit sector,” he says. Donors who give on this one day, he thinks, might have given at another point in the month or year anyway.

Large Groups Benefit Most

When so many charities are focused on raising dollars on the same day, the environment becomes challenging — especially for small groups, Mr. Rosen says.

A Blackbaud analysis of 2014 Giving Tuesday data found that the scale might be starting to tip in favor of the small and midsize groups using the day to raise money. While the largest organizations took in 74 percent of online donations in 2014, that number declined from 84 percent the year before. The share going to medium-size groups increased 8 percent from the year prior, and the proportion going to small groups increased 2 percentage-points.

Still, big groups are the big winners.

“I think there’s a real danger that the sector is in effect cannibalizing donors rather than bringing new donors into the fold,” Mr. Rosen says.

Some groups see participation in the event as a requisite, despite feeling like they can’t compete with the big dogs.

The conservation group Red Panda Network raised $1,400 when it joined Giving Tuesday for the first time in 2014.

“My impression was that our little nonprofit got a little lost in the sea of larger nonprofits who are able to leverage the tool bigger, better, and faster than we can,” Nancy Whelan, the charity’s director of development said in an email to The Chronicle.

This year, the charity has a goal of at least doubling that amount while also contributing to the day’s larger mission of raising awareness about giving in general. "#GivingTuesday is the party you can’t not show up at,” Ms. Whelan said.

Farra Trompeter, vice president of Big Duck, a communications firm that works with nonprofits, agrees.

“People are going to be talking, and why not at least make sure you’re on their radar?” she says. “It has gotten enough attention out there that to do nothing doesn’t makes sense.”

Avoiding ‘Line Dances’

Still, others are turned off by that bandwagon mentality.

“Why be there just because I feel like I’m supposed to?” says Lauren Shweder Biel, executive director of DC Greens, a nonprofit working to promote access to healthy food and better food education and policy in Washington. “I don’t like line dances.”

She would rather solicit support on a day when people aren’t inundated by an onslaught of appeals: “Knowing that you’re sharing an inbox with 20 or 50 other organizations, logic says to me that that’s not the most effective way to be seen by your donors.”

Out of concern that Giving Tuesday may alienate supporters and potential supporters, the social-service provider Union Settlement Association, in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, has in the past used the day as an opportunity to give back while not asking for any donations. The group will do the same this year, distributing single-ride MetroCards and encouraging community service. Larger organizations, like the University of Florida, also plan to use Giving Tuesday for stewardship rather than for solicitation.

Ms. Trompeter says there may be valid reasons why an organization would not want to join the herd on Giving Tuesday. But she urges charities not to waste the day.

“If you’re worried about oversaturating your email or impacting click-through or open rates for other messages you’re sending,” she says, “certainly you can use social media or use it as a thank-you opportunity.”