By Paul Clolery, Richard H. Levey and Eric Obernauer
GivingTuesday squeezed out just an estimated 0.6% gain compared to 2022 and those numbers include a decline of roughly 10% in the number of people who participated in the annual day of generosity.
The decline in participation mirrors what charities have been seeing through most of the year.
“Our goal with GivingTuesday, not just on the day itself but year-round, is to create an ecosystem of giving that helps communities, causes, and organizations across the globe,” said Asha Curran, GivingTuesday’s chief executive officer. “However, we are concerned to see a decline in participation in line with giving trends from the past year. GivingTuesday’s mission is to inspire generosity among as many people as possible, not just raise as many dollars as possible. Generosity has such important correlations with civic participation, community cohesion, and well-being.”
Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday, called the $3.1 billion “another huge year,” although red lights are flashing. “We came into GivingTuesday seeing a lot of headwinds, less engagement with nonprofits, fewer donors,” he said. It is clear, though, that there needs to be a shift in the connection to donors. “The way people engage is prolific and diverse,” Rosenbaum said. “Just understanding it is not a zero-sum game.” He said a “scarcity mindset” needs to be reversed.
The warning signs for a flat GivingTuesday emerged early in the day. Various donation processing platforms were reporting the decline in the number of donors with an increase in the average donation size, as previously reported in The NonProfit Times. That continues the fundraising trend of the past few years as reported via numerous academic research papers and actual reported results.
What was clear is that there was a significantly greater outreach via digital platforms. Carrie Cobb, chief data officer at Blackbaud, said early in the day “At the current rate, we are on track to surpass last year’s number of #GivingTuesday emails sent by nonprofit organizations. …Today’s volume being the highest Blackbaud has processed all year.”
Giving Tuesday is inundated with emails, funding match challenges, and social media posts, “creating a cacophony that can easily overwhelm and be ignored. Amidst this noise, intentional and meaningful connections with partners, donors, and funders become pivotal,” said Nicole Lamoureux, president & CEO of the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s about finding ways to stand out by delivering thoughtful engagements rather than just adding to the noise is critical,” she said.
Soraya Alexander, president of Classy and chief operating officer of crowdsourcing platform GoFundMe, said early in the day that giving “seems strong.” And that many organizations were “flat year-over-year, seeing some growth.” Nothing was wildly anomalous, good or bad, she said.
It was much the same at Softerware, where nonprofits on the DonorPerfect platform were seeing a 2% increase in online donations on #GivingTuesday this year compared to 2022. “Our projections for offline gifts that get entered into the system after the day will show approximate parity with last year as well,” said Lauren Sheehan, president of DonorPerfect.
All of the platform representatives said that part of the issue could be two-fold – competition with consumer retail and expansion of GivingTuesday to more than a one-day event.
Black Friday 2023 online sales hit a record $9.8 billion, up 7.5% from $9.12 billion in 2022. Cyber Monday sales, which stood at $11.3 billion in 2022, might jump by a similar percentage, as they are expected to top $12 billion in 2023.
“This year, nonprofits seeking to leverage GivingTuesday encounter significant competition, not only within their sector but also from the commercial space,” said Adva Priso, chief digital strategy officer at direct response firm Moore. “This involves digital promotion that commenced weeks ago for Cyber Monday, now extending to a full Cyber Week blitz, and the introduction of Travel Tuesday, sharing the same day.”
Moving away from “a massive ask on one day to sustained relationship-building efforts, organizations can strategically utilize GivingTuesday for more than just fundraising and the importance of intentional and meaningful engagement amidst the overwhelming congestion of the day,” said Lamoureux, whose organization hit its $10,000 goal. “This amount may seem small compared to many other nonprofits, but we have shifted how we perceive GivingTuesday. This day serves a broader purpose,” said Lamoureux.
There were some successes on the day. DonorsChoose in New York City raised $2.9 million for students of color and at schools in low-income areas through the organization’s Equity Focus initiative. It emphasizes support for students of color in K-12 education from low-income communities by allowing individuals and corporations to give directly to classrooms that have been historically underfunded. Approximately 33,000 donors supported 21,000 individual classroom projects, exceeding the goal for GivingTuesday by 28%.
GlobalGiving has a record-breaking day, accordin to CEO Victoria Vrana. “We witnessed a record-breaking Giving Tuesday this year — with more raised in a single day than in any other day in GlobalGiving’s history, proving yet again the power of our common humanity to rise to the challenge of trying times. Together, we raised nearly $3.7 million from 15,502 donations for 1,279 nonprofit organizations around the globe. We’re immensely grateful for the tremendous community of people around the world who came together to make this day an astounding success.”
The record was in line with the rest of the sector, a 0.6% year-over-year increase. “GlobalGiving donors who were presented with a personalized, suggested donation amount in our GivingTuesday email tests were 80% more likely to convert than donors who were not,” she said. Traffic to GlobalGiving’s GivingTuesday landing page increased along with conversion from 2022 to 2023.
Something that might have bolstered the day was donor-advised fund grants. Grant requests by donor-advised fund holders with the National Philanthropic Trust were up 37% on Giving Tuesday last year compared to the year before, and by midday were up 30% in value on Giving Tuesday this year, said Eileen Heisman, CEO, National Philanthropic Trust (NPT) in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.
“That 30% data point is likely to go even higher by the time the West Coast finishes for the day. I don’t have enough data points yet to know if we’ll exceed the 37% increase that we saw last year, but my guess is we we’ll at least match it or be really close. So, I think that’s very promising,” Heisman told The NonProfit Times.
Schwab Charitable sends an average of more than 2,500 grants to charities each day throughout the year. “This #GivingTuesday, we expect to send more than five times the average number of daily grants on behalf of our generous donors who are committed to supporting their favorite causes,” said Schwab Charitable President Sam Kang. “Despite overall giving declining in 2022 according to Giving USA, Schwab Charitable donors increased granting last year with funds that had already been set aside for charity, and we continue to see increased donor activity this year.”
Rosenbaum said that coming out of a period of pandemic-related giving, the GivingTuesday number might be somewhat of a return to normalcy, given the caveat that more donors also need to be engaged. “There’s more data to collect and to think through plans” for the next GivingTuesday, “translating the learning into actionable advice,” he said.
