5 responses to “Booooo!”

1. Claire Axelrad says:

   December 6, 2013 at 1:55 am

   Statistics in a vacuum lie. An old Danish proverb of which I’m quite fond tells the story: “Beware of a half truth; it may be the wrong half.”

   What does this data tell us really? Giving on a particular date in time is rather meaningless without knowing what happens the rest of the year. Each nonprofit will need to analyze for themselves what Giving Tuesday meant for them this year. Did they raise more money overall (too soon to know)? And was the increase directly attributable to what they rec’d on Giving Tuesday? Or was it just an up trend this year? Or did they have a bunch of other new strategies in place that may have influenced the increase? Did donors who gave on Giving Tuesday give more overall this year? Or did the Tuesday gift simply replace another gift they would have given later?

   On top of what happened this year, there’s the issue of what happens next year? Do nonprofits have a specific plan in place to steward Giving Tuesday donors so they will become ongoing, loyal supporters over time? Or is this a one-time transaction (and did perhaps the staff resources and other costs of acquiring this gift result in a net loss to the organization)?

   I don’t see a lot of balance here. We’ve got Giving Tuesday on one side of the scale. What’s on the other side of the scale? Perhaps lost opportunity in going after small transactional gifts when the organization could have been focusing on developing larger transformative gifts?

   I’m all for shining a light on philanthropy. Would prefer to see a day like Giving Tuesday used for shining the light right back on the philanthropists who move our missions forward. Giving is a two-way street. Why not a day for nonprofits to thank philanthropists?

   And do we really need both Giving Tuesday and National Philanthropy Day? It gets pretty confusing.

2. Kim Silva says:

   December 6, 2013 at 10:44 am

   We work with a local newspaper on a year-end campaign (separate from our donor list year-end campaign, of course) that targets people 35 and under. All of the 100+ nonprofits that participate found that Giving Tuesday significantly increased our donations. Of course, this newspaper also has their own giveaways for super cool prizes, including one on Giving Tuesday, so those days tend to have significant increases compared to the other days. Overall, through the newspaper campaign, giving is down about 30% in dollars, but up (can’t recall the number) in number of donors. Interesting. Maybe we all have been doing a good job converting those newspaper donors to our regular donors? Let’s hope…I know that my organization has converted quite a few, but many want the incentives so give through the paper. Fine with us, as long as they keep giving.

   We are just starting to receive our regular year-end appeal donations. We didn’t see a significant difference in Giving Tuesday from that list than any other day. These are our most loyal donors, so they will give when it best suits them…some in January. That is okay with us. Whatever works best for our donors. We just make sure to give them the opportunity to give.

3. Ruth Herring says:

   December 7, 2013 at 4:59 pm

   #GivingTuesday was a great success in our shop at the Women’s Foundation of California. We tried something new, which was exciting for all of us. We engaged record numbers of board and staff in fundraising and spreading our message online. We created a cool new video which we’ll use for other fundraising. We raised more money online in one day than ever before. We attracted a significant number of new donors and built our e-list. And we received positive media. We also took advantage of this opportunity to deepen the bonds and collaboration among our communications and development teams and jointly executed a very nuanced and personal thank-you effort (emails, letters and calls) in record time. We’re getting raves from donors, board members and staff. As the new development director, I’m thrilled!

4. Tom Belford says:

   December 7, 2013 at 5:32 pm

   My question to Ruth and all the others who made ‘special’ efforts on Giving Tuesday — engaged Board and staff, cool new video, collaboration between communications and development teams etc.

   Shouldn’t that be the routine?!

   Are you going to revert to second best effort on Nongiving Wednesday?

5. Jono Smith says:

   December 9, 2013 at 2:36 pm

   +1 for Claire’s comment. I’d love to see The Agitator consider expanding upon this issue in a future post!