I will never forget that moment at an event in San Francisco when a respected newspaper editor stood up and lambasted me for being part of the posse helping support #GivingTuesday in its early days. “This will fail,” he exhorted. “People already have too many causes to donate to and there are already too many options on how to give.”
I’m happy to report it wasn’t true back then. And it is definitely not true today.
Founded in 2012 as an antidote to the increased spending and commercialism that follows Thanksgiving shopping in the United States (and increasingly, around the world), #GivingTuesday has quickly become an omnipresent part of the holiday season. It has evolved as a labor of love, powered by the ideas and courage of a few, and scaled by the generosity and creativity of many.
2020 is the perfect time to re-invest in the power and possibility of this day. If you look around at the world, the needs are great. Fortunately, the depth of that need is exceeded by the growing numbers of people who want to help. Philanthropy.com reports that charitable giving in the first half of 2020 increased by almost 7.5% over the same time in 2019. We should commit to ensuring that increase is even higher for the second half of the year—especially as much of the world moves into what is sure to be a challenging winter in the midst of a pandemic.
One of the key lessons of #GivingTuesday’s evolution over the years is that people are looking for new ways to identify with causes on a deeper, personal basis. The inherent need to give and connect is far more profound than the “clicktivism” that is often debated and derided. People want to be smart about the issues they support. Donors today – both large and small – are looking for so much more than a label as “woke” or adulation in ballrooms or on buildings. They want to know where their dollars are going; they want to evaluate projects, the process, and the people involved. They want their values to be part of the value that their dollars bring to causes worldwide.
COVID-19 has forced people to take a long, hard look at the causes that merit their immediate support. In many ways, donors have been forced into a sort of triage scenario for the causes they support. A global pandemic has helped us “zoom in” (to borrow a phrase from Marian’s trends forecast for 2020) even more conscientiously on the parts of our lives that we value most. Family. Faith. Food. Friends. Freedoms. Is it possible that this #GivingTuesday—amid the myriad emails and solicitations for donations—we will see a shift in tone and content around the things in life that matter most reflected in how people give?
Philanthropy is a key component of global social good. Yet people’s motivations for giving change with the headlines and according to what’s happening in the world. To some degree this is a natural response to what is urgent and the fears and crises we face in any given week. But we must ask: Are we simply reacting to giving trends or are we fundamentally raising the bar when it comes to the role of giving in our society? While the world responds to very short-term needs related to the ongoing global health crisis this #GivingTuesday, perhaps our donations and social media activity will help us re-focus on the ways that we talk about the long-term issues and to be more considerate and deliberate about understanding the needs and talents of the people and the planet we want to help.
I wish I could have a conversation today with that editor who, years ago in San Francisco, predicted #GivingTuesday would do nothing but fizzle. In retrospect, perhaps I was the one who failed because I did not explain the mission of the movement correctly or by bringing him into the creation process. Perhaps the failure for him was not of a movement, but of the prospect that giving, like everything else, was about to change. Thinking about this moment makes me re-commit to helping people find new ways to talk about their charitable giving, their activism, and their involvement in civil society. As quickly as our world is changing, it is only natural that the way we give will have to keep pace.
Wherever people fall on this issue, the facts tell a story: Giving is up. The #GivingTuesday movement continues to grow. And, in this tumultuous and unprecedented year, the #GivingTuesday movement may redefine the ways that people are prepared to get out the give.
Part of the allure of #GivingTuesday has always been that it is a way to mask that voice of guilt the day after so much spending on things we might not need. Maybe in this new normal, what it will become is a creative chorus of voices committed to making charitable giving part of a larger movement to protect the vulnerable, lift up the oppressed, and reward the innovative. A day devoted to giving might still be our best chance to help turn basic transactions into transcendent actions.
