Mark you planning calendar. Or not.

December 1^st 2015 marks the fourth annual #GivingTuesday.

#GivingTuesday is that artificially inseminated day of philanthropy aimed at capturing some of the torrent of consumer spending that marks the holiday shopping season in the days following American Thanksgiving.

Here at The Agitator the event seems to stir up Tom’s and some of our readers’ more curmudgeonly or at least skeptical instincts. See this initial post marking #GivingTuesday’s inaugural year in 2012.

By the time the event reached its third season in 2014 at least some of our readers, but not Tom, had grown more moderate in their take on #GivingTuesday. Their reactions — pro and con — are reflected in Why Should I Care?, our last post on the subject.

To keep the discussion on #GivingTuesday going and growing Blackbaud last week released – on Wednesday, not Tuesday – their report “#GivingTuesday Trends: A Closer Look at the Online Fundraising Impact in the United States.” You can download it free right here.

[Actually, I had to sneak this post in while Tom wasn’t looking!]

Here are the key takeaways from the Report:

• The most recent Giving Tuesday, which took place on December 2, 2014, generated $46 million in online contributions according to estimates compiled by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and five gift-processing platforms — Blackbaud, DonorPerfect, GlobalGiving, Network for Good, and Razoo.

• This is more than double the amount raised in 2012’s inaugural event. And in 2014 28% more organizations received online donations on #GivingTuesday than did so in 2012.

• Over the past three events, according to the Blackbaud study, 4,396 nonprofits took in collectively $55.6 million in Giving Tuesday donations. To be included, nonprofits had to have received at least one Giving Tuesday gift. The study does not include donations made on other online gift-processing platforms or offline giving.

• 17% of donations were made through a mobile device. And, as Blackbaud notes, this occurred despite the fact “we know that most donation forms aren’t mobile friendly”.

• The average online gift exceeds $100 for most organizations.

• Faith-based organizations now receive the largest percentage of #GivingTuesday online donations; they were followed by higher education with 17% and health care and medical research, which each took 13%.

As Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud’s Analytics Chief and the Report’s presenter, noted: “Both higher education and health care have been laggards in online giving for the past 15 years. This is rooted in a fundraising culture traditionally focused on high-touch practices and major-gift fundraising.”

I also asked Steve about some of the other findings in the Blackbaud report. For example, what does he make of the trend showing that large nonprofits (those who raise more than $10 million annually) got less of a share in 2014 than in 2012 (74% in 2014, down from 80% in 2012), while medium-sized and small organizations have been cutting into that share of wallet (up from 13% in 2012 to 21% in 2014).

Says Steve:

“First, talk to any large nonprofit and they’ll take 5% growth on anything, especially when you’re talking about millions of dollars in a single day.

“Second, that 5% growth in 2014 is on top of 60% year-over-year growth from 2013. In this case, the glass was overflowing and then it was just overflowing slightly less.

“Third, under normal conditions, if large orgs have a big drop in overall giving, then it tanks the entire sector. But that didn’t happen on #GivingTuesday. Growth actually went up because medium and smaller nonprofits kept on driving a lot of giving. If some large nonprofits choose not to focus on #GivingTuesday, then others will and they’ll benefit.”

Here’s Steve’s optimistic take on the future of #GivingTuesday:

“All of these trends point to one really important thing: We are at the beginning of #GivingTuesday. No nonprofit has cornered the market on it. If large nonprofits choose not to focus on it that means smaller organizations will likely benefit. If different sectors of the nonprofit world focus on #GivingTuesday more than others, then they’re likely to be the winners in the long run.”

In light of the data Steve thinks we all should be asking the following questions. Knowing what you know today about the growth of online giving:

• Don’t you wish that you’d focused on #GivingTuesday sooner?

• Made it a bigger part of your overall fundraising program?

• Maybe invested in it more when other nonprofits were still sitting on the fence?

So really, where do you now stand on #GivingTuesday?

Steve says “It’s like 2000 all over again, but donors are already on board and don’t need to be convinced. Now’s your second chance to get it right.”

Are you seizing this second chance?

Roger

P.S. Shhh! Don’t tell Tom I posted this.