Yes, I’m happy that #Giving Tuesday 2015 was a good time for all. What’s not to like about $117 million raised from 700,000 donors?

Was it incremental giving or just a re-shuffle of gifts that would otherwise have been made on Monday or Friday? Who knows. I guess we can look at the appropriate comparables for the November/December window in 2014 and 2015 to get a sense of how uplifting #Giving Tuesday might have been in the bigger picture.

But I’d like to raise a different possibility for #Giving Tuesday next time around … a possibility that would convert me from a skeptic to a zealous advocate.

As I commented here, one of my reservations about #Giving Tuesday is that it drives everyone’s focus to organisational fundraising targets rather than donor enablement and inspiration. All the talk of targets has to do with beating last year’s ‘take’ versus meeting programmatic goals. It’s all about technique and tactics.

Switch gears for a moment.

Last Saturday, for the first time since 1920, the New York Times ran an editorial on its front page. Its title: End the Gun Epidemic in America.

Now there’s a challenge I would love to see ALL the talented folks involved in nonprofit fundraising in the US apply themselves to … setting aside their own parochial fundraising objectives for just one day.

As the Times said in its opening sentence: “​It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.”

Imagine if #Giving Tuesday had focused all that attention on one over-arching objective in 2015 (and a different one each year) — and $117 million had been raised in one day to help end the scourge of  weapons of mass murder (let’s not blandly call them ‘guns’) in America.

Would it be impossible for America’s fundraisers, united, to stand for one day for something beyond the immediate needs of their own organizations?

Maybe that’s blue sky idealism on my part. How would an appropriate ’cause’ for the year be identified and agreed to … how would that selection process be driven … who would convince all those boards … who would get the money? I don’t have the answers. But our profession ought to be smart enough to figure them out.

I just know that I could get really excited about #Giving Tuesday if it were more than an institutional exhortation to top last year’s take and then let’s celebrate with a group hug.

If it had a giving purpose.

If it stood up for something.

Tom