Giving Tuesday
Giving Tuesday, often stylized as
Giving Tuesday was initially started in 2011 and called Cyber Giving Monday and was the brainchild of the non-profit Mary-Arrchie Theater Company and then producing director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia urging donors to take a different approach to filling up an online virtual cart with goods. The push was moved to Tuesday the following year as to not compete with Cyber Monday by the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation as a response to commercialization and consumerism in the post-Thanksgiving season. The date range is November 27 to December 3, and is always five days after the holiday.
History
Summary of money moved
2012
The idea for Giving Tuesday was first announced in October 2012, a month before the first planned Giving Tuesday. The announcement was made by Giving Tuesday founding partner Mashable, a technology website. Other founding partners listed in the story were Skype and Cisco. Other partner organizations announced over the coming weeks included Microsoft, Sony, Aldo, Case Foundation, Heifer International, Phoenix House, and Starwood Hotels. Mashable provided detailed coverage of Giving Tuesday.Other news and opinion websites that announced Giving Tuesday well in advance were CNet, the Huffington Post, and Deseret News.
Shortly before, during, and after the date, Giving Tuesday was covered by Washington Post, the White House official blog, ABC News, and the Huffington Post. Forbes used the occasion to publish a guide to effective giving.
2013
Mashable also covered Giving Tuesday in 2013, including a partnership with Google+ to hold a "hangout-athon" for Giving Tuesday. The Huffington Post also covered Giving Tuesday extensively.Giving Tuesday also received coverage in many philanthropy information websites, including Charity Navigator and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The December 4 Chronicle of Philanthropy article highlighted a donation by Good Ventures to GiveDirectly, Google's hangout-a-thon, and matching grants announced by the Case Foundation.
Giving Tuesday was also covered by mainstream newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.
Charitable giving on Giving Tuesday in 2013 was approximately twice the value in 2012. Over 7,000 nonprofits participated in the 2013 Giving Tuesday.
2014
In 2014, thePhilanthropy News Digest, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Mashable reported estimates by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, based on payments processed by Blackbaud, DonorPerfect, GlobalGiving, Network for Good, and Razoo, that a total of $45.7 million was donated on Giving Tuesday. Of this, $26.1 million was processed by Blackbaud. The tally did not include $7.5 million that Indiegogo claimed to have raised for 419 nonprofits on that day. By 2014, the movement became global and involved organizations and individuals from 68 countries.
2015
The John Templeton Foundation released a study based on a survey of Americans that showed that whereas 93% of respondents were familiar with Black Friday, only 18% were familiar with Giving Tuesday, showing that the day still had a long way to go in terms of achieving name recognition. Nonetheless, organizers were optimistic about continued growth in money moved, volunteering, and name recognition for the day, and payment processors and retailers offered donation matching and incentive schemes to encourage people to donate on the day. In 2015, Blackbaud supplied data to show real-time statistics on an online dashboard to highlight the impact of #GivingTuesday.Facebook's principal founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan published an open letter to their newborn daughter, announcing their intention to donate 99%+ of Zuckerberg's wealth from his Facebook shares through the newly formed Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Their announcement, which did not mention Giving Tuesday, happened on Giving Tuesday 2015, and some commentators noted that the couple had taken Giving Tuesday to a new level. However, Blackbaud's data analysts suspected that Zuckerberg's announcement did not have much effect on the overall volume of charitable giving for the day.
According to initial reports, Blackbaud processed $39.6 million in donations for Giving Tuesday, and total money moved for the day was $117 million.
2016
In 2016, according to USA today, #GivingTuesday broke a record with $168 million in charitable donations worldwide, topping the 2015 totally by 44%. CNBC reported GivingTuesday.org's number of $177 million. The Blackbaud group processed more than $47.7 million from more than 6,700 organizations.Furthermore, when compared with the previous year, online donation volumes increased by 31% while 33% more non-profit groups received an online donation. Since 2012, they also calculated that the presence of Giving Tuesday had increased by 317%.
In the UK, Charities Aid Foundation announced more than one in ten adults took part in the event while 6.4 million people stated they had heard of the movement. Of these people, one in three stated they would do something for charity.
Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $500,000 in matching for donations to fundraisers on Facebook, and Facebook waived fees for $500,000 in donations. After the $500,000 limit was hit within hours, the Gates Foundation increased its matching to $900,000.
2017
For Giving Tuesday 2017, Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $2 million in matching for donations to fundraisers on Facebook, and Facebook announced that it would waive its 5% fees for U.S.-based nonprofits all day long. Matching was limited to $1,000 per fundraiser and $50,000 per nonprofit. $45 million was raised by nonprofits through Facebook fundraisers on Giving Tuesday, well above the $2 million matching limit.An unofficial third-party analysis, based on data shared by donors with timestamps of donations and whether or not they were matched, showed that donations were matched for only the first 86 seconds.
2018
For Giving Tuesday 2018, Facebook and PayPal announced donation matching for up to $7 million in donations to United States nonprofits starting 8:00 EST on Giving Tuesday, on a first-come-first-serve basis, up to $20,000 per donor and $250,000 per nonprofit. The match limit being hit was announced 9:05 EST, and the announcement said that the match was achieved within seconds. An unofficial third-party estimate, based on data shared by donors with donation timestamps and whether or not they were matched, showed that donations made till 14 seconds after the start of donations were matched, but donations made 15 seconds or more after the start of matching were not matched. The analysis also claimed that only amounts up to $2,500 per donation were matched. A total of $125 million was raised via Facebook on Giving Tuesday, the highest for a single day on the platform. Total donations on Giving Tuesday were estimated to be nearly $400 million in the United States alone, according to tentative estimates.2019
In July 2019, Giving Tuesday spun off as a separate nonprofit from its former parent 92nd Street Y.Giving Tuesday was held on December 3, 2019. This was the first year that the Giving Tuesday Data Collaborative attempted to estimate both online and offline donations on Giving Tuesday. The estimate for online donations was $511 million, and the estimate for the total across online and offline donations was $1.97 billion.
Facebook announced donation matching for the first $7 million donated starting 8 AM EST on Giving Tuesday. A total of $120 million was raised through Facebook on Giving Tuesday, and an additional $20 million was raised in Giving Tuesday fundraisers in the week leading up to Giving Tuesday. The amount raised through Facebook on Giving Tuesday was slightly less than the corresponding amount from the previous year.
2020
In response to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, an extra Giving Tuesday was organized for May 5, 2020.Reception
Reception of Giving Tuesday has generally been positive, with a large number of organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Skype, Cisco, UNICEF, the Case Foundation, Save the Children, and others joining in as partners. Giving Tuesday has been praised as an antithesis of consumer culture and as a way for people to give back.Timothy Ogden, managing director of the Financial Access Initiative at New York University and board member at effective altruism organization GiveWell, wrote articles for the Stanford Social Innovation Review skeptical of Giving Tuesday, one in 2012 and another in 2013.
Inside Philanthropy attributed Giving Tuesday's growing success and global reach to the role that technology companies and founders played in promoting the event, including the $5 million matching grant to GiveDirectly announced by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz's foundation Good Ventures and the $75,000 in matching funds announced by former AOL CEO Steve Case for donations made to charities supported by his organization.
A January 2015 article in Nonprofit Quarterly discussed Giving Tuesday in the context of giving days in general. Giving Tuesday was described as a federated, multi-platform campaign, that involved many different nonprofits and many donation processing platforms, all focusing on a single day so that they could coordinate efforts to raise awareness and publicity. It was contrasted with the Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, that involved many nonprofit participants but used a single donation processor every year to allow for better tracking of the money moved.