Charities reap Giving Tuesday rewards
Giving Tuesday pulled in significantly more than last year, with some charities saying they raised more in online donations than in any previous 24-hour period.
The General Board of Global Ministries for the United Methodist Church, for example, said it pulled in $6.5 million in online giving from 11,000 donors in 34 countries Tuesday.
The church’s donation records date back to 1948. Ben Rhodes, associate general secretary of communications and development for the United Methodists said: “This is without question the largest single day for online giving.”
Rhodes said that the best previous 24-hour period for online giving was $492,882, set in January of 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti.
Giving Tuesday is a daylong national event designed to help charities raise money online.
Its sponsors and participants quadrupled from about 2,600 charities last year to more than 10,000 this year.
They have a collective goal of making the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving as big a day for philanthropy as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are for shopping.
While it’s impossible to get a total figure for how much was given on Tuesday, there are indications that it was a big day for many charities.
Blackbaud Inc., a Charleston, S.C.-based provider of software and services for nonprofits as well as a founding partner of Giving Tuesday, said it typically tracks about 10% of all online donations in the U.S.
Steve MacLaughlin, director of Blackbaud’s Idea Lab, said the company processed more than $19.2 million in online donations Tuesday, up 90% compared to the previous Giving Tuesday.
“That exceeded our expectations, to say the least,” MacLaughlin said.
The social media analytics firm Crimson Hexagon offered another indication of the growing interest in Giving Tuesday.
As of early Wednesday, Crimson Hexagon said it had tracked more than 320,000 tweets related to #GivingTuesday over the previous 24 hours.
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