What is Giving Tuesday?
Every year, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, people take the time to kickoff the holiday season by giving back to their community. Whether it be donating money to a charitable cause or volunteering, Giving Tuesday is a day set to benefit the community.
History of Giving Tuesday
The idea of Giving Tuesday was first announced in September 2012, two months prior to the first Giving Tuesday occurring on November 27. The announcement was made by Giving Tuesday founding partner and technology website, Mashable. The purpose of the day is to inspire people and companies to take action, just like Black Friday and Cyber Monday created a framework for retailers to sell merchandise. Other Giving Tuesday founders and partners include Skype, Cisco, Microsoft, Sony, Aldo, Case Foundation, Heifer International, Phoenix House, and Starwood Hotels. Shortly before and after November 27, 2012, Giving Tuesday was covered by Washington Post, the White House official blog, ABC News, and Huffington Post. Forbes also used the occasion to publish a guide on effective giving.
In 2013, Mashable partnered with Google+ to hold a “hangout-a-thon” for Giving Tuesday. The holiday received coverage in many philanthropy information websites, including the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Charity Navigator. The Chronicle of Philanthropy article highlighted a donation by Good Ventures to GiveDirectly, Google’s hangout-a-thon, and matching grants announced by the Case Foundation. Charitable giving on Giving Tuesday in 2013 was approximately twice the value in 2012, with over 7,000 participating nonprofits.
For the 2018 holiday occurrence, Facebook and PayPal announced they’d match up to $7 million in donations to United States nonprofits on a first come first serve basis. The match limit was hit after only an hour, with an announcement saying the match was achieved within seconds. A total of $125 million was raised via Facebook on Giving Tuesday, the highest for a single day on the platform.
Giving Tuesday takes place on Tuesday directly after American Thanksgiving, which in turn takes place on the 4th Thursday of November. Giving Tuesday was created to help the “giving season” get started, reminding people that there is more to holidays than consumerism and commercialization.
History of Giving Tuesday
Giving Tuesday was created when two organizations, the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation came together in 2012, about a month before that year’s Thanksgiving. Their intention was to set aside a day that was all about celebrating the generosity of giving, a great American tradition.
Many though leaders in the areas of social media, philanthropy and grassroots quickly joined in, and together they created a group of founding partners including United Nations Foundation, Cisco, Mashable, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Sony, Aldo, Groupon, UNICEF, Google, Skype, Microsoft and Unilever. The first announcement about Giving Tuesday was made through Mashable, a technology website. The first Giving Tuesday was covered extensively by the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, ABC News, Deseret News, and the White House official blog, causing the scheme to gain an enormous amount of popularity in a short period of time.
Giving Tuesday is organized and celebrated each year with the simple aim of encouraging individuals, families, schools, businesses, and other organizations to give to the less fortunate. A year later, in 2013, even more organizations joined in, including eBay (which gives a percentage of all its sales proceeds from a week in December to Giving Tuesday) and fashion designer Kevin Cole, who both designed and promoted awareness ID bracelets, giving 100% of the proceeds to Giving Tuesday.
Giving Tuesday has been praised by many, including the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper that covers the nonprofit world, as an antidote to consumer culture and a way for people to give back.
How to Celebrate Giving Tuesday
There is no shortage of ways in which this can be done. In recent years ideas have included organizing fundraisers, with the intention of giving the proceeds to a charity. As there are many ways to give in order to help others, and many things that can be given besides just money, there have been numerous other schemes.
Among these are blood drives to give some assistance to local hospitals, volunteer fairs at which individuals can pledge to give time to community projects, and families giving food from their home to local pantries. The hashtag #GivingTuesday was also created to raise awareness about the needy and encourage people to give to charities.
If you like, you can join Giving Tuesday’s team of Social Media Ambassadors, who are dedicated to spreading the word about #GivingTuesday and taking collaborative action to give back. At the end of the day, the truth is that there are thousands of charity organization the world over, many of which are likely located somewhere near you.
Every single one of them could use your help, so find a cause that is especially important to you personally, whether it’s fighting a certain type of cancer, helping to buy schoolbooks for children from very poor families, or helping the animals at your local animal shelter, and take action! However you choose to celebrate the day, you can then share your story with Giving Tuesday’s official website to spread the word to the entire world.
