The History of Giving Tuesday

The very first official #GivingTuesday was initiated by Asha Curran, Henry Timms, and other executives in 2012 at the 92nd street YMCA, a nonprofit community and cultural center in New York City. The original idea was a response to the massive amounts of money spent in retail sales on Black Friday and cyber-Monday following Thanksgiving. The team wanted to be able to appropriate some of the money that was being spent toward the nonprofit sector instead of just toward pure commercial consumption.

The founders of Giving Tuesday never could have imagined how it would grow and become a self-sustaining movement. In 2012, they recruited nonprofit partners, they were hoping for 100 and received 2,500, the very next year that number grew to 40,000, and now there are too many participating partners to count and track. In 2012 the initiative moved $10.1 Million, this has grown in 10 years to $2.7 Billion in 2021, a 26,000% increase over 10 years.

For a lot of organizations this initiative has been incredibly successful, raising thousands or millions of dollars through new donors, corporate partners, and a lot of social media engagement. To continue to grow and sustain the movement, Giving Tuesday officially incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 2020. Their website provides helpful resources on how to participate as an individual, as an organization and as a sponsor as well as a way to navigate their global network of participating organizations.

Giving Tuesday has remained a big day of giving for a lot of organizations, but it can come with setbacks. A primary metric of most fundraising shops is donor retention. Fundraisers are desperate to find ways to retain new Giving Tuesday donors, sometimes even creating more problems for themselves than a one-time $25 gift is worth.

Also be on the lookout for matching gift promotions and read carefully what an organization is promoting, some organizations use “matching gift” as a true 1:1 match and a “matching challenge” means the gift will be the same amount regardless of what is raised. If an organization you support is already promoting a matching gift or challenge, this is a great reason to give to a place that you are already supporting. Don’t forget about company matching gifts, and some fundraising platforms like Facebook.

Giveology’s recommendation this Giving Tuesday and during the season of giving in general is to assess your current giving priorities for the year to come, support the campaigns of the organizations you already support, and use this reminder to set up recurring donations. It can be easy to see something go viral and be enticed into giving to a new organization. If that happens, great, just don’t make them chase you for the next 5 years trying to retain you.