As Giving Tuesday approaches, we hope you’ve started planning ways to maximize donations, goodwill towards your nonprofit, and socially-distanced fundraising. If you feel like you don’t even know where to start, we've got an idea for you—download our Giving Tuesday Toolkit and get all the things you need to make your nonprofit’s Giving Tuesday a success in every sense of the word.

If this seems like a drag, you might feel tempted to just give up on Giving Tuesday altogether. “Just throw in the towel!” say the cranky voices in your head. “We’ll get ‘em next time!”

Do not listen to those cranky voices. Tell them to hecken cheer up and get to planning.

Giving Tuesday is the kick-off to your year-end fundraising campaign. It's everything you hoped for; it's everything you neeeeeed ...aaaand now we’re going give you three reasons you absolutely cannot afford to ignore Giving Tuesday.

Giving Tuesday is forecasted to break records this year online.

Giving Tuesday was founded in 2012 as a less capitalistic, more “encourage humankind to do good” answer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, days known to set records for profits and revenues.

Don’t be fooled, though; just because Giving Tuesday is the do-gooder cousin of Black Friday and Cyber Monday doesn’t mean it’s any less of a record-breaker. In fact, in its short existence, Giving Tuesday has broken all sorts of records for single-day funds raised.

In 2019, Giving Tuesday campaigns generated over 500 million dollars in online donations and more than 20 billion social media impressions.

In 2020, U.S. GivingTuesday participants gave $2.47 BILLION.

In 2021, they broke the record again with $2.7 billion given in the U.S.

Be part of a record-breaking team. Join the Giving Tuesday movement.

What's your alternative?

We're gonna be blunt with you for just a moment. Are you ready? Inhale, exhale, and have a seat, because we’ve got some news for you.

You may not have an alternative to Giving Tuesday if you’re looking for a major kick-off event for your end-of-year fundraising push.

Look, we all know we’re living in the COVID-19 era. Fundraising in the time of coronavirus is nothing like fundraising in the time before the so-called new normal. This is a time to call upon that nonprofit unicorn resourcefulness we cherish in ourselves so much.

So what do you do? You go digital. You join the Giving Tuesday crowd, you register on the Giving Tuesday page, you download Funraise’s Giving Tuesday Toolkit so you’re prepared with a Giving Tuesday strategy that’s locked, loaded, and ready, and ...you go digital.

Giving Tuesday is your best opportunity to take advantage of everything the digital-first movement has to offer nonprofits. Lean in!

Giving Tuesday’s growing more popular by the year

We’ve already established that Giving Tuesday’s a record-breaker of an event, year after year.

Let’s not forget Giving Tuesday’s popularity in and of itself, however. Since its inception in 2012, Giving Tuesday has become a household name along with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As of 2015, 93% of consumers had heard of Black Friday ...while sadly, only 18% of that same group of people had even the slightest inkling what a “Giving Tuesday” was.

These days? With the support of organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mackenzie Scott, Facebook, the PayPal Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and others, pretty much everyone with access to WiFi has heard of Giving Tuesday. It’s grown larger each and every year—and by joining the Giving Tuesday movement, your nonprofit can take advantage of some of the well-earned publicity Giving Tuesday’s received.

Summing Up

Look, unicorns—we cannot overstate Giving Tuesday’s importance to the nonprofit ecosystem. It is our answer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It is the kickoff to our year-end fundraising pushes. Giving Tuesday's not the end-all-be-all—your mission and the good work you do is the end-all-be-all—but it’s pretty darn close.

So if you’re thinking of ignoring Giving Tuesday, take a deep breath and then don’t. Download Funraise’s Giving Tuesday Toolkit to make it easier on yourself and get emails, social posts, examples, calendars... pretty much the whole nine yards necessary to make your Giving Tuesday strategy sessions easy-peasy.