Giving Tuesday Shows Significant Growth in 2014

Giving Tuesday is a day that gives the world a chance to celebrate charities. In the past, it has been known as a day that follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the increasing support shows it stands out on its own. According to Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (along with the United Nations Foundation), Giving Tuesday raised a total of $45.68 million, up $17.59 million from 2013. The report shows a significant increase in the amount of awareness Giving Tuesday received from social media; Twitter posts using the hashtag #GivingTuesday more than doubled from 2013.

The number of donations increased by 53 percent from last year’s Giving Tuesday. Una Osili, the director of research at the Lilly school, discussed the importance of capturing this information accurately. “We can capture data as it’s happening and see what’s influencing donor behavior…how organizations can use social media effectively,” she states.

Kathy Calvin, chief executive of the United Nations Foundation, indicated that celebrity involvement on social media was key to the public’s awareness of Giving Tuesday.  Calvin stated that Giving Tuesday has “gotten very good at building a powerful platform for the nonprofits.”  She also stated “[Giving Tuesday] directly challenges Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where you have analysts lining up looking at the numbers as a gauge of the health of our economy. What if, as a nation, we focused that kind of attention on giving and we wanted that to be our identity?”

For a better picture of the impact this Giving Tuesday had compared to 2013, check out this article by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.