Giving Tuesday was a rousing success for nonprofits once again
#GivingTuesday has quickly become one of the more remarkable nonprofit fundraising days on the calendar even though last month’s event marked just the third anniversary of the occasion. Giving Tuesday was launched and I believe originally conceived back in 2012 as an organized philanthropic alternative/response to Black Friday and Cyber Monday and falls on the first Tuesday following the celebration of *Thanksgiving Day (*US version). We’ve written about the GivingTuesday event previously on the blog and although it’s just over ten months in advance of the 2015 event I thought it would be a great time to see how well the events of last month went.
As I write it occurs to me that such amazing growth in awareness of something so new might have been impossible in the days before social media. Cast your mind back a decade, most organizations perhaps operated a website that probably paled in comparison to what we see and use today. Blogging was in its infancy and most of our donor communication that originated online was via email newsletter signups, forums and for a select view perhaps the very advanced (at that time) relay chat. In 2005 the largest social media networking site in the world was MySpace and although it was extremely popular for a few years businesses and nonprofit organizations never made a huge foothold via the tool nor was it geared in that direction.
Imagine trying to build the awareness of an industry-wide event like Giving Tuesday in the days before Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (to name just three) and hoping that your website could generate the same level of awareness and response around the country. Incidentally all three of those platforms were formally launched in 2006 although it took varying periods of time to see the participation rates grow to being anywhere near what we see today. It was a very different time indeed in 2005.
With all of that said let’s now take a look at some of the results from the 2014 #GivingTuesday which are simply fantastic.
- Total donations received were estimated at being in excess of $45.6 million for the single day – an increase of over 62% from Giving Tuesday in 2013
- Over 15,000 nonprofits participated last month compared with approximately 9,500 in 2013 – an increase of about 58% on the year
- In total almost 70 different countries around the world participated in Giving Tuesday 2014
- Twitter (almost) exploded on Giving Tuesday with over 698,000 hashtag mentions on the day, considering around 500 million Tweets are posted every single day that means almost 1.5% of all tweets posted that day used the hashtag #givingtuesday
- Approximately 77% of all donations received on Giving Tuesday were made online
The infographic below provides even more data about the success of the event in previous years but all in all it constitutes remarkable growth for an idea that is just over three years old. Even a conservative guess at the ongoing growth and popularity of Giving Tuesday suggests that somewhere in excess of $100 million could be donated by the time we reach the sixth anniversary although there’s a very good chance it could be far more. The amazing number of nonprofits who took part last year is impressive in itself exceeding fifteen thousand in total but consider the long-term potential.
According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics there are over 1.4 million registered nonprofits in the United States of which almost 975,000 are public charities. Meanwhile in Canada according to the Charities File there are more than 80,000 active nonprofits. Imagine what Giving Tuesday could achieve over the next five years if as many as 10% of all nonprofits in Canada and the USA were to take part in the event? Such participation levels are surely possible and that would represent over 100,000 participating organizations in the years to come. I hope you’ll join Miratel in helping to build awareness in Giving Tuesday again this year and we’d love to know how last years special day went for you. Finally I’d like to thank The Case Foundation.org for the exceptional infographic featured above.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.
Giving Tuesday was a “rousing success”? Are you kidding? That’s just pure hyperbolic nonsense.
For starters, assuming that $45 million was raised on Giving Tuesday, and assuming that 15,000 charities participated (both numbers are likely low), that would mean the average participating charity only generated $3,000. Of course, that’s just an average. That means that while some charities generated more, some produced far less.
While $45 million seems like a lot of money, the reality is that it amounts to just 0.01 percent of overall philanthropy in the USA. (Note: Not all of the $45 million was generated in the USA, so the real percentage of philanthropy is actually even lower.) Would I rather have the $45 million than not? Of course! However, let’s not kid ourselves about how effective Giving Tuesday has been. It’s impact is still tiny, and it is certainly not a “rousing success.”
I provide a great deal more analysis at: https://michaelrosensays.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/givingtuesday-has-not-made-a-huge-difference/
I understand that more complete reporting of the Giving Tuesday numbers will be forthcoming. So, we’ll have to wait to make any final evaluation of Giving Tuesday 2014. However, based on the current data, I’m not impressed.
Thanks very much for your comments Michael. I think it’s an impressive start, as would be any idea, initiative, nonprofit or business that has grown by over 50% year-over-year in each of its first three years.
The 0.01 percent is accurate, but remember it represents a single day – so in truth it’s over 3% of all nonprofit fundraising for that day on a pro-rated basis.
‘From small acorns do mighty oaks grow’