#GivingTuesday is a day of giving where of thousands of organizations and individuals (including me) come together to give and call attention to giving, volunteering, and infecting others. In its first year, #GivingTuesday, a national effort initiated by the 92ndY and the U.N. Foundation produced these results as documented by Edelman. In the lead-up to the December 3rd event, the question of how to extend a day of giving into a giving season? Alison Fine, my Networked Nonprofit co-author, is crowdsourcing suggestions and advice on making a Giving Season actionable.
Giving Tuesday is an example of emerging trend of community, state, or national days of giving where people and organizations collaboratively engage the growing numbers of online donors, but also promote the idea of giving with marketing campaign and corporate sponsorship. In some communities and states, the hosts are community foundations that also provide capacity building for the nonprofits they serve to help them build skills in online fundraising and social media.
Wonder if #GivingDays is just the hottest trend, to be a regular part of the toolkit in the near future? #fundchat
— brendankinney (@brendankinney) September 18, 2013
Over the past few years, Giving Days have been popping up in many different structures, sizes, and formats. From stand-alone 24 hour giving days in a local community like CentreGives in State College, PA to GiveOut Day a national campaign where LGBTQ nonprofits joined forces to encourage giving to the grandfather of giving days, Give to the Max Day hosted by GiveMN now in its 5th year.
Today marks the beginning of the “Giving Days” season, as I write this North Texas Giving Day is well underway. To celebrating its 5th year, North Texas Giving Day hopes to exceed last year’s fundraising results of 37,800 donations totaling $14.4 million.
We can expect to many more Giving Days in the coming months as the lead up to year-end giving and also into the coming years. The Knight Foundation launched the “Giving Day Playbook,” a step-by-step online guide of best practices, templates, checklists, and other resources for community foundations to successfully host a Giving Day in their community. It answers many questions hosts may have about planning, implementing, and evaluating the day.
Yesterday, FundChat hosted a Twitter Chat with the Playbook’s authors, Kari Dunn Saratovsky (@kds) of KDS Strategies and Daniel Kaufman Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies where they shared lots of solid practical and strategic advice for making a giving day successful. (The transcript is here) The online conversation about how to host successful giving days continues today with an online chat at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. With attention being given to this model of inspiring community-wide giving, it is important to think in a networked way and don’t reinvent the wheel.
A2: One thing to think about is if there is already a state-wide #GivingDay. Don’t want to start own if one already exists. #fundchat — Josh Gold, MNM (@NonprofitGold) September 18, 2013
So, getting back to Allison’s question of how to leverage a day of giving into a giving season. How can create a Giving Days Season or maybe a Giving Days Movement! Maybe that’s just what we’re seeing – the beginning of a giving movement – spreading best practices of networked fundraising. Organizations, individuals, communities, and funders are all rallying behind the exciting promise of making a giving days transform into giving seasons beyond the holidays.
