What comes after Thanksgiving? Black Friday. Cyber Monday. And now, perhaps, Giving Tuesday.
This holiday season, a group of about 60 nonprofit organizations and businesses are hoping Americans will mark a new tradition by opening their wallets one more time after their post-Thanksgiving shopping ends. But instead of buying, they want them to give to charity.
The new national campaign is called #GivingTuesday, an idea the group hopes will spread largely through social media. On November 27, the campaign will urge people to donate or volunteer to causes and charities they care about. They can also participate in events #GivingTuesday organizers are holding that day.
Organizers hope nonprofits across the country will tie their fundraising appeals to Giving Tuesday or schedule their volunteer projects and campaigns on that day.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting to take a page out of the playbook of the retail world and see if the giving community can come together in the same way under the umbrella of #GivingTuesday?” says Henry Timms, deputy executive director of the 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community and cultural center in New York.
He and his wife came up with the idea last Thanksgiving and quickly amassed a group of enthusiastic nonprofit and corporate partners throughout the spring and summer. They liked the idea that designating a day of giving could also boost year-end fundraising campaigns across the nonprofit world.
Already the coalition includes nonprofits such as Charity: Water, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and United Nations Foundation; fundraising platforms such as Crowdrise, DonorsChoose.org, GlobalGiving, and Kiva; and companies such as Blackbaud, Darden Restaurants, Groupon, Mashable, Microsoft, Skype, and Unilever.
Among the efforts already planned by some of the sponsors:
- Groupon will feature a collection of fundraising campaigns on its Web site.
- Blackbaud, a software developer and service provider for nonprofits, will track fundraising data during #GivingTuesday.
- The 92nd Street Y says it has secured an anonymous donor who will match donations to the organization during #GivingTuesday.
- Mashable says it will encourage its staff to volunteer that day to teach young people to be digitally literate.
- The Financial Times plans to raise funds for the Global Fund for Children by hosting a companywide cake sale.
“It’s really a great time for the giving community to get together and try a new way of stimulating giving,” Mr. Timms says.
A new YouTube video seeks to persuade Americans to adjust their usual patterns of spending and consuming in the days after Thanksgiving:
http://youtu.be/OO7jxUQXIP4