"Giving Tuesday" Awards
Looking at the global event that raised over $500MM in the US alone -- as a donor
Thankfully, the 200 emails that I’m used to receiving on Giving Tuesday didn’t arrive — only about 100 did. I didn’t receive any phone solicitations as part of the campaign this year, either. I’m relieved about both of those, as I usually start bracing myself for the onslaught about two weeks before the event, and for the last several Giving Tuesdays, it got increasingly worse every year. Still, 100 emails asking for money — immediately — can be a bit overwhelming.
For those that don’t know how Giving Tuesday started, see here. The idea — to encourage global generosity in the days just following Black Friday and Cyber Monday — is noble and smart. The 92nd Street Y, who created the thing with the UN Foundation, in 2012, was right (as usual) in thinking that there had to be some antidote and response to the crazy materialism that defined the days after Thanksgiving. I agree and support the concept. The revenue that came from the event was staggering — over $500MM was evidently raised this year in the US alone, which represents a 25% increase over last year. The average gift is estimated to be about the same as prior years — typically in the $100-$140 range. All admirable.
The execution, though, is something different altogether.
Giving Tuesday was (and, per their website, is) about doing good in any way that you can (not just financial). In practice, though, it appears to be really just about money. I looked and looked, and although I tried to find information beyond cash donations, (the non-financial “giving” part), I found very little, and most of it was anecdotal. Too bad. Of those 100ish emails I received on Giving Tuesday, none said a word about non-cash giving.
The event is also challenging from a business point of view. For charitable organizations, Giving Tuesday is typically something that you do because everyone else is doing it, and if you can spend minimal resources on it (glom on to the national program, set up a webpage, and prep a mass email or two to send to your mailing list), why not? Doing the minimum lets you look like a team player (with “the team” being the larger nonprofit world), while you can continue your focus on getting end-of-the-year donations from your substantial donors. And so it goes….
But what is that like from the perspective of regular donors?
Not so good, it turns out. Not only is the onslaught incredibly off-putting, but it also makes me, like other donors, question my year-round giving.
Here are some examples:
First, why don’t organizations parse their list, and let existing donors off of the Giving Tuesday train? Why, as some nonprofit professionals suggest, don’t these organizations use the day to thank their regular donors, and allow them to not have to deal with the pushy and annoying Giving Tuesday solicitations? Maybe I am being mercifully left off of some of the Giving Tuesday emails, and that’s the reason why this year’s solicitations are half of last years. There’s no way to know for sure, but I hope that’s the case.
If I give money to an organization during the year, and I then get pushy emails or other solicitations on Giving Tuesday, I feel like the organization is sending me a message that my money/giving just wasn’t enough. And because it wasn’t given on a Tuesday, it doesn’t really count. I’m not a professional fundraiser, but I’m pretty certain that’s not a message that nonprofits want me to hear.
When I see an organization that I know about, but haven’t yet contributed to, and that organization sends 3-5 emails to me between the Sunday before Giving Tuesday and Giving Tuesday, I’m highly likely to scratch them off of my list as potential recipients of my money — forever. Do some donors really give on email #5 if they didn’t give on email #2?
Because lower level folks often deal with Giving Tuesday (as the individual donations are typically of the “direct mail” type — i.e. lower in dollar value), the messaging can often be unprofessional and not reflective of the nonprofit as a whole. Giving Tuesday can be one of those “what the heck, we have nothing to lose!” projects, and therefore it’s usually just a small part of a nonprofits annual strategy. That said, I think that participation in Giving Tuesday, for most organizations, isn’t strategic at all — it’s really just opportunistic and relatively easy to do.
This last point brings me to the fun part of all of this — the emails themselves. This year was no exception in that some organizations used it as an opportunity to write emails that were edgy, creative, and fun. Others, on the other hand, didn’t think about how the email content (typically the subject line) was perceived, and instead they seem to have banked on the idea that smaller donors aren’t so smart, and frequency and mindless content was all that it would take to get their $50-140. How demeaning and insulting!
So with that lead-up, here are some of my favorites of the 2019 Giving Tuesday “season”:
The Winners
The first group of winners are all of the organizations that used their subject line to write about matching donations for the day. Even for existing donors who don’t particularly want to be solicited again, matching donations (leveraging your gift) are compelling. (However, in my opinion, that’s still not generally worth alienating existing donors by being part of the onslaught that day.)
Sadly, the matching donation tool was used by some irresponsibly, as many nonprofits made it seem that the Facebook $7MM donation-matching grant that day applied only to their organization. It didn’t. It was a single pool that was matched, per Facebook, “in seconds”. (Meaning there wasn’t a match after a minute or two into Giving Tuesday.)
The next group of winners are the organizations who included a message, in a few impactful works, about what a donation on Giving Tuesday would accomplish. Examples of these are “This Giving Tuesday, invest in a tipping point for peace” (Allmep), “Invest in Diverse Reporting this Giving Tuesday” (IWMF), and “This Giving Tuesday Save Animals” (the Los Angeles Zoo). I gave to each of these at some point, so I recognized the organization, and I was reminded about what they did right in the subject line. Good job!
In a group of its own, though, is one that didn’t really make me want to give, but made me laugh — on this day that I was feeling assaulted by so many fundraisers. The subject line was “Not Taco Tuesday!”. Fantastic. (Okay, readers, not so fantastic in that it didn’t make me want to give, but I sometimes you just have to honor entertainment value.)
The Unfortunate non-winners
The first group of “nice try, but no thanks” organizations are the many, many nonprofits who wrote subject lines such as “It’s here!”, “It’s Giving Tuesday!”, “What’s Going on Today!”, and “Today is Giving Tuesday. You Can Make a Difference!”. Please, fundraisers and marketing folks, realize that I have 100 Giving Tuesday emails. None of these give me any reason to open them.
The next group of, well, unfortunate and ill-conceived email subject lines are the ones that were sent the day before Giving Tuesday. Subject line messages included “We need you Tomorrow!” and “Tomorrow’s the Day!”, and “Giving Tuesday is less than 48 hours away!”. For the large part of the population that gives on all sorts of days, just because there’s a brand name to the day doesn’t give me any reason to get so excited about this particular Tuesday.
There is also one in a group of its own in this category. One organization sent a calendar entry icon in their subject line, reading “Save the Date: Giving Tuesday”. I calendar lots of different kinds of things, but why in the world would I calendar Giving Tuesday? I may want a calendar reminder for an event or my friend’s birthday. If there’s an emergency need or there’s a deadline for tickets to a charity event, I may want a calendar reminder. But I don’t understand why I’m supposed to get excited and calendar donating on a particular day in the future. Seems pretty simple to donate whenever I want to.
Fundraisers and nonprofit marketing folks: I’ll end with an easy suggestion for making Giving Tuesday work better for you. Think about getting 100 emails in your in-box — pretty much all at once — all asking you for money. Which ones are you likely to answer?
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- Lisa