GivingTuesday started off loudly with the announcement of a $6.25 billion donation from tech magnate Michael Dell and his wife Susan. The money is targeted for personal federal savings accounts being set up for qualified children. The gift is $250 for each account to be established next year under legislation that was passed by Congress. The money is first going to the federal treasury, where official said it would be added to the $1,000 in federal money eventually seeding the accounts.
That’s a large example of what charities have been seeing the past few years: wealthy donors making big gifts while the number of small donors declines. However, early returns on GivingTuesday show smaller donors stepping up with a few more dollars while the overall number of donors, so far, has been relatively flat.
The early numbers are showing many double-digit increases compared to last year when $3.6 billion was estimated to have been raised in the United States. GivingTuesday officials deferred comment until its official day-after announcement.
Share Our Strength’s early numbers as of 4 p.m. (EST) were 11% more than the same period last year, according to Senior Vice President Communications and Marketing Laura Washburn. “We had great coverage on national media today,” she said. The organization was featured on NEWSNation and TODAY on the NBC network.
The American Heart Association reported midday gains of 14% in revenue, 11% in number of gifts received and a 3% hike in gift size, according to Greg Donaldson, senior vice president, corporate & marketing communications. The number of donors was not yet available.
While percentage comparisons were not immediately available, Undue Medical Debt was on track to “abolish at least $200 million in medical debt for families across 10 states where we know we can make the biggest impact,” according to Marisa Clemente, vice president, philanthropy. She explained that the nonprofit “acquires medical debt in bulk for those least able to pay and every one dollar donated erases, on average, $100 of medical debt.”
A significant trend this year, she said, is the volume of donors who want to use this day to incentivize others to give. The donors have “proactively earmarked significant funds specifically for matching gift opportunities to boost community-wide participation.” The early returns show “strong giving across the board, reflecting the broad, bipartisan appeal of financial relief for working families,” she said.
The GoFundMe platform was busy. “What we’re seeing across GoFundMe is incredibly encouraging. Historically, a quarter of all annual nonprofit giving happens on our platform between GivingTuesday and December 31, and we expect this year to be no different,” said Margaret Richardson, GoFundMe’s chief marketing and corporate affairs officer. “With half the day still ahead on the West Coast, we’re already seeing strong growth. In fact, we’ve exceeded last year’s hourly volume every single hour, underscoring the strong donor participation and growing interest in this global day of generosity,” said Richardson.
Donors via the DonorPerfect platform were giving an estimated 4% more online gifts with the median gift of $234, a slight uptick from last year, according to Jeff Vogel, vice president of marketing and business development at DonorPerfect.
There are a few trends that are becoming clear. According to Adva Priso, chief digital strategy officer of Moore, strategic testing across channels in the days leading up to GivingTuesday allowed early pivoting to “what works quickly as well as investing more in data and ads.”
She said organizations that have been in the news recently, similar to Share Our Strength, have been “buoyed by that news with surges in gifts to areas like food banks that were hampered by changes in SNAP funding,” said Priso. Investment in paid media also appears to be moving the needle higher.
Gretchen Littlefield, chief executive officer of Moore, said the early results give “real optimism for a strong year-end fundraising finish.”
One area that has been showing early softness is international giving. For example, several of the giving channels for World Food Program USA are better than last year, while other were lagging as of midday.
“There have been pockets of strength on our channels. Paid search looks set to beat last year’s revenue, and Google Display is currently at nearly five times last year’s performance,” said Jessamyn Sarmiento, chief marketing officer of World Food Program USA. “Meta has struggled as the cost of ad serving has increased and emergencies like Gaza and Sudan have seen declines in search interest over November, according to Google,” she said. Email and the website were down year over year, “and the team is taking steps to optimize as well tweak site experience and load time issues to help boost performance down the stretch,” she said.
Animal Charity Evaluators hit its matching challenge goal of $300,000 for its Recommended Charities by midday. “As one of 10 charities participating in the Double Up Drive, we are in the lead with over $66,000 raised (all of which will be matched out of their $500,000 match pool) in the first few hours of their matching drive,” said spokesperson Emma Cameron.
“We just had a successful virtual event earlier today, featuring representatives from all 10 of our Recommended Charities speaking to a room of almost 200 registered attendees,” she said.
Income from GivingTuesday is serious business, but that doesn’t mean you can’t by funny. Sara Schairer, founder and executive director of Compassion It, likes to play word games and the name GivingTuesday evolved on her LinkedIn page to something that might be NSFW in some quarters. You can check it out here … https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sjschairer_heres-a-giving-tuesday-idea-im-excited-activity-7399477092046012416-ceEF/
The NonProfit Times will be continuously updating this story.
