Giving Tuesday is upon us.
Last year’s event raised more than $301 million for thousands of charities. Since it began in 2012, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving has emerged as the unofficial kick-off to the year-end giving season and a tool for recruiting supporters and raising money online. It seeks to tap into the energy produced by the commercial-focused Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Many groups use the day to experiment with ways to strengthen bonds with their supporters, says Asha Curran, chief innovation officer at 92nd Street Y, which launched the first Giving Tuesday along with the United Nations Foundation. “The value of Giving Tuesday is that it encourages us to take some risks,” Curran says, including by testing new messages about their causes.
But other organizations are seeking to simply double down on their most successful tactics from previous giving days.
“People have kind of figured out what works well,” says Kestrel Linder, CEO and co-founder of GiveCampus, which helps 600 schools and colleges raise money online. “What we’re seeing is a basic application of best practices.”
Linder will be watching some new developments in GiveCampus’s data: how many donors contribute on mobile devices (last year, nearly half did) and how many use Apple Pay. Knowing how popular it is to give that way should help nonprofits and colleges decide what tools they need to spark giving, he says.
Here’s what some organizations have planned for this year’s event, including some new tactics organizations are using to encourage people to give.
Going Live
Last year, the Sikh Coalition, which advocates for the Sikh religious faith and offers legal help to its members, raised $250,000 on Giving Tuesday, including matching donations.
This year, for the first time, the coalition will host live videos on Facebook. The videos will be streamed in 30-minute segments from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time. Each block will be hosted by a staff member who will discuss topics of concern to the nonprofit’s supporters, such as its legal work to combat discrimination and support Sikhs’ religious freedom, “community empowerment” efforts, and programs to increase the visibility of Sikhs in the media.
The organization hopes that many social-media followers will tune in — even if only for a few minutes — and be inspired to give, says Mark Reading-Smith, senior media and communications director. “It’s kind of like an old-school telethon with a sort of new-school look,” he says. Other nonprofits, particularly colleges, have a lot of success with live videos on Giving Tuesday.
Matching Gifts
World Vision, the international aid charity, has had a lot of success promoting matching contributions over the years.
Since 2014, Thirty-One Gifts, a direct-sales company for purses, tote bags, and household items, has doubled the value of people’s contributions to World Vision on Giving Tuesday by contributing products such as clothing and towels to women and children in need around the world.
This year, the company will match people’s gifts up to $2 million by donating products to people in various countries, though it hasn’t been determined yet which ones. Last year, the company’s products went to families in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Somalia, and Zambia.
The matching gifts, which are promoted in email and on social media, are key to the growth in revenue that World Vision has seen on Giving Tuesday over the years, says Peter Livingston, brand-development manager at World Vision. Since 2014, the group’s total raised on Giving Tuesday has jumped 575 percent, he notes.
The matching gifts made World Vision stand out in 2014, Livingston says. Now the organization is just one of many nonprofits that match donors’ gifts. “Fast forward to 2018, and it’s really a must-have part of any Giving Tuesday campaign,” Livingston says. “So what once was kind of a novelty has become a best practice.”
Star Power
As is the case every year, actors, pop stars, and other famous people will promote various causes on social media.
Some celebrities, big-time philanthropists, and reporters are already lined up to post on social media about #GivingNewsDay, the Giving Tuesday drive for NewsMatch — a campaign funded by several foundations, nonprofits, and others partners that will double gifts made to 155 nonprofit newsrooms in November and December this year, says Josh Stearns, of the Democracy Fund, which supports NewsMatch. Nonprofit newsrooms themselves will also promote the hashtag and encourage people to support their work.
Stearns declined to provide the names of the celebrities who have committed to tout #GivingNewsDay. Still, he noted that last year actor Mark Ruffalo, climate-change activist Bill McKibben, and news anchors Katy Tur and Greta Van Susteren promoted the drive on social media. In part because of the boost from big-name supporters, more than 5,000 Twitter posts included #GivingNewsDay during 2017’s campaign, Stearns says.
“Film stars, Hollywood personalities, media personalities all understand that when they see threats to press freedom, [they are] also threats to all of our freedom of expression and our right to know,” he says. Newsrooms supported by NewsMatch raised $428,000 on Giving Tuesday last year.
Email Blasts
Almost all campaigns include email messages that remind subscribers that it’s Giving Tuesday — and many sent messages last week and earlier notifying supporters about the giving day, including World Vision Move for Hunger, Acting Without Boundaries, and Clasp, an anti-poverty group. Monday, the Sikh Coalition emailed supporters about its livestream schedule for Giving Tuesday and to tout its matching-gift fund. It also plans to post on social media Monday to promote the giving day.
Animal-welfare organization IndyHumane’s email schedule on will likely be similar to that of other nonprofits. The group plans to send several emails on Giving Tuesday, at least one each in the morning, afternoon, and evening, says Britnee King, brand and content manager. The evening message will remind people that it’s not too late to give, she says.
The messages will point to videos on social media and its website that will show how the group assists animals. Similar content helped the organization raise more than $22,000 online last year. This year, the organization’s goal is $40,000.
Big Ambitions
The Brooklyn Community Foundation is amping up its third annual #BrooklynGives on Giving Tuesday event by raising its goal.
It is seeking $1 million for 100 nonprofits, far more than the $360,000 it raised last year to support 20 groups, which were finalists in a competition to reward nonprofits tackling some of the most important local issues. To spark donations, it is offering a $100,000 match for gifts made on Tuesday — something it also did last year.
The Brooklyn Gives website will roll out a new option for this year’s event: A “shopping cart” on the site will allow donors to give to more than one charity at a time and let them search by cause to find like-minded organizations to support.
The Washington chapter of the federal government’s workplace giving campaign is also looking to increase its haul on Giving Tuesday. The Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area, which raised $1.8 million on last year’s day of giving, has announced it is seeking $2 million on this year’s Giving Tuesday.
Heather Joslyn contributed to this article.