#GivingTuesday 2023 Plans Build on Previous Success

This week, the 12th iteration of #GivingTuesday will be in the books, the grassroots philanthropic effort that has raised an aggregated total of more than $11 billion within the United States for nonprofits since 2012. Much of that has come within the past few years as the movement has ramped up: 2020-2022 alone accounted for $8.2 billion in U.S.-based financial donations. The $3.1 billion generated in 2022 represented a 15% increase from 2021’s level.

That total was generated from 20 million funders, a 12% uptick from the previous year. Another 11 million gave goods, 8% more than in 2021. And #GivingTuesday 2022 saw 10 million people give their time and effort, an increase of 3%. Even with people participating in multiple forms of giving, the organization estimated that 35 million individual adults in the United States participated in some form during 2022. In the funding arena, online donations for the day topped $1 billion — a high-water mark.

GivingTuesday’s geographic reach continues to broaden. In 2016 — the earliest year listed in GivingTuesday’s 2022 Impact Report — 20 countries hosted formal campaigns. By last year, the number of countries officially supporting GivingTuesday had more than quadrupled, to 85. This year, Lesotho and Seychelles launched official efforts, joining a wide spectrum of government, commercial, religious, organizational and special interest campaigns.

Additionally, during 2023 the GivingTuesday organization added two new “Hubs” — United States/Canada and Latinoamérica y el Caribe — to its preexisting Hubs in Africa and India. According to a GivingTuesday spokesperson, “Each Hub has dedicated local staff who lead on relationship-building and provide support and tools for the region’s GivingTuesday leaders. These Hubs work to deepen the movement’s impact, build capacity among local ecosystems, support more proximate leaders, and unlock pressing data needs.”

Within the past year, the U.S. and Canada Hub held several summits that allowed community leaders to discuss and exchange ideas on leadership, peer learning, and community building. During summer 2023, the Hub gathered youth leaders in New York City for a first-ever “Spark Summit,” which included workshops, discussions, volunteer opportunities, and team building events. The Latin America and the Caribbean Hub is in the process of conducting a literature review of giving practices and traditions throughout the region.

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The organization’s two preexisting Hubs, Africa and India, have also been active ahead of #GivingTuesday. In October, the Africa Hub brought country representatives together in Nairobi for its first in-person summit, enabling them to brainstorm collective campaigns and strategies for boosting generosity at the continental level. And the India Hub continued its work aggregating data and research and leveraging existing networks and partners to unite data partners around a shared project.

#GivingTuesday has launched several consumer-facing initiatives for 2023, including Give As We Grow, a joint effort created in conjunction with National Center for Family Philanthropy and Phillips Foundation. Give As We Grow is a free downloadable game geared toward school-aged children and their families designed to foster altruism among kids. Separately, GivingTuesday debuted its Generosity Toolbox, a crowdsourced compendium of altruistic and philanthropic strategies, tactics and actions.

The organization has been promoting a new hashtag — #OrdinaryExtraordinaryGenerosity — which offers individuals and organizations an opportunity to share tips on, and examples of, small acts of kindness. While the hashtag does not necessarily reflect the financial philanthropy aspects of GivingTuesday, it does reflect a more inclusive view of generosity.

This article was originally published by The NonProfit Times.