The symbol for a 10th anniversary is tin. Leaders of GivingTuesday and event organizers in 87 nations are instead hoping for gold and maybe even platinum. Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary for GivingTuesday and it comes with fundraisers stressing about worldwide inflation, the invasion of Ukraine and shaky social media platforms.
In the glass half-full department for hopeful anticipation, consumers reportedly spent a record $9.12 billion online while shopping during Black Friday, according to Adobe, which keeps an eye on retail websites. That’s a year-over-year increase of 2.3%.
The statisticians at GivingTuesday Data Commons estimate that 35 million adults participated in the United States on GivingTuesday 2021, a 6% increase compared to 2020. Giving in the United States totaled an estimated $2.7 billion representing a 9% increase compared to GivingTuesday 2020, and a 37% increase since 2019.
Organizers say that the giving totals are impressive but have evolved the event over the decade to a “generosity” event, where all sorts of community and personal work are encouraged and calculated into the overall numbers. For example, organizers estimated that volunteering and gifts of goods on GivingTuesday 2021 also increased from 2020 in the United States. Volunteering on the day increased by 11% and gifts of goods (clothes, food, supplies, etc.) saw an 8% increase compared to 2020.
The various forms of generosity are complementary and fuel each other, according to Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer of GivingTuesday. For example, statistics from GivingTuesday Data Commons show more than 76% of acts of generosity tracked are non-monetary and 65% do not involve nonprofit entities.
The data also show that 55.6% of financial donations were less than $100 and 84% were less than $500. Most donors are making one gift (70.3%) and just 13.5% were to two organizations.
According to data from technology finance and fundraising platform Bonterra, newer and more recent donors will likely give in lower amounts. Fundraisers should be conscious of this in solicitations. Fundraisers should consider requesting a lower gift size but accompany it with additional non-monetary asks such as volunteer opportunities or GivingTuesday, according to an analysis from Bonterra.
Events are slated for 87 nations, an increase from 82 last year. A number of those campaigns are in nations facing internal crisis and conflict or recovering from natural disasters. “But it’s also interesting to hear from those global community leaders who say here are all the terrible things going on in my country, and here’s a list of the really interesting, impactful, community-led, uplifting things we’re doing,” said Rosenbaum.
Inflation is a concern, although less so in the United States where at the end of October it was sitting at 7.7%, compared to Germany at 10.4% and the United Kingdom where it was 11.1%. Inflation in Canada was 6.9% but 88% in Argentina.
The GivingTuesday team in Ukraine has been busy. “Rather than what we might have expected – which is ‘we don’t have time to be doing Giving Tuesday’ – they’re leaning into Giving Tuesday as an opportunity to respond to that need and help strengthen civil society,” said Rosenbaum.
A team in Russia has been a longtime partner with GivingTuesday, he said. That team “has been facing many challenges with respect to its relationship to the government and the overall environment since the invasion (of Ukraine), but they were on the call this morning and will be participating. In the past, it’s been much more institution-led but it’s going to be more grassroots-driven this year,” Rosenbaum said.
And then there is Elon Musk. Twitter is a major form of communication and advocacy during the day. More than 50% of the Twitter staff has been fired or quit during the past two weeks as Musk attempts to reshape his $44 billion purchase.
Uncertainty with social media platforms is causing concern. Along with Twitter, Facebook is getting less traffic. “These are things that are concerning not because of any definitive negative indicator,” said Rosenbaum but it’s unpredictable.
Social media activity was present in every country and territory in the world during GivingTuesday 2021, according to data from GivingTuesday Project Coordinator Wendy Lundgren. There were 2 million Instagram posts using the #GivingTuesday hashtag and GivingTuesday trended #1 on Twitter all day. In 2020, there were roughly 3 billion Twitter impressions. On TikTok, the #GivingSzn hashtag was up to 676 million views.
GivingTuesday was launched in 2012 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City and incubated in its Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact as a day to do good. The founders are Asha Curran, the current chief executive officer of GivingTuesday who was at the Belfer Center and Henry Timms, who was head of the 92nd Street Y and is now president & CEO at Lincoln Center in New York City.
The event has been cemented “as part of the nonprofit fundraising calendar year, according to Shannon McCracken, CEO, of The Nonprofit Alliance in Washington, D.C. “Time, talent, treasure, organizations globally have risen to the challenge of thinking about what that could look like for them.”
“As we head into the last month of the year, December has been known to throw up surprises for fundraisers. And by surprises, I mean, negative surprises,” said McCracken. “Right now we have relative economic stability coming out of Q3 of 2022. We’re not currently in a recession. But as consumers, we’re all conscious that we’re walking on the brink of that.”
Fundraisers are going into GivingTuesday with a good sense of what their budget could or should be, regardless of what it is on the books, what they’re expecting on Tuesday, explained McCracken. “And as they get up and tally those numbers on Wednesday morning, it’s really about do they fall in line with where they budgeted for the next four to five weeks, or did they budget really, really wrong one way or the other,” she said.
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The NonProfit Times writers Richard H. Levey and Eric Obernauer contributed to this story.
