Jacksonville charity leader: Giving Tuesday shows millennials, Gen Z impact on donations
For more than 10 years, Giving Tuesday has been the preeminent global movement for nonprofit fundraising. Prompted by Black Friday for retail or Cyber Monday for online sales, it’s a sector-wide virtual push that mobilizes citizen philanthropists to give, volunteer or advocate for the causes they care about.
The whole idea behind Giving Tuesday is to leverage awareness and solidarity around the act of giving worldwide. I was lucky enough to be a founding member of the worldwide Giving Tuesday initiative at its inception in 2012 when I was leading GlobalGiving, a global crowdfunding platform I co-founded.
Since then, I have seen Giving Tuesday evolve into stratospheric success in the philanthropic space, spurring more than $13 billion total in giving since its launch.
Local organizations such as the Jacksonville Humane Society have been part of this, doubling online donations in just a couple of years through a focused effort to leverage online storytelling around Giving Tuesday. There is something undeniably powerful in nonprofits recognizing that by working together on this one day to increase our collective visibility, we all win.
This year Giving Tuesday donations are estimated to have stayed flat relative to last year, topping out at $3.1 billion (compared to more than 15% year-over-year in 2022). In the U.S., 34 million adults are estimated to have participated in Giving Tuesday, potentially a 10% decrease in the number of participants. With the steady growth of Giving Tuesday in the past decade, there will likely be serious analysis of these trends in the weeks to come.
However, I also want to point to some forward-looking research that was carried out by Giving Tuesday in partnership with the Florida Nonprofit Alliance and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. The research focused on what motivates people aged 45 and under in Florida as potential leads for what we might expect in the future.
First, younger Floridians (ages 18-45) are more generous than the country’s average donor. They are also more likely to give time, items and money in nearly equal measure. They can also be somewhat distinctly categorized into three types of donors: reliable responders, informal spontaneous donors and the relatively unengaged.
What is exciting about these categories is that there are distinct strategies and tactics to appeal to and reach individuals in these categories. It also opens the door to further research about whether there is porousness across these categories; for instance, can an informal spontaneous donor become a reliable responder and if so, how?
It could be that the 2023 data is telling us that we are reaching a generational inflection point and that the approaches that might have worked on the donors over 45 will not be as effective on younger donors. To me, the data ― combined with the research — underscores the importance of exploring a whole-person approach that reflects the desire of millennials and Generation Z to engage holistically with the causes they support.
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As a cutting-edge technology-based movement, Giving Tuesday is an excellent vehicle to build awareness among a younger generation of donors, as well as keeping loyal stakeholders involved with your nonprofit.
At the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, we have supported our grantees who engage with digital fundraising, offering matching dollars to all the grantees who participated in a training program this fall; nearly 30 of these organizations are in Northeast Florida. We expect to match about $1 million in grantees’ donations generated during their year-end giving campaigns, including Giving Tuesday.
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We intend to continue this research and support in the coming years so that our nonprofit community has all the tools needed to adapt to a continuously changing donor landscape. It’s critical for the sector, of course, but it’s critical to all of who give as well. Because there is evidence that giving makes us not just happier, but healthier.
So to my neighbors across Northeast Florida ― I invite you to be a part of a worldwide generosity movement by giving time, financial resources and the power of your voice to a nonprofit you love.
Mari Kuraishi, president, Jessie Ball duPont Fund
This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jessie Ball duPont Fund supports local grantees in digital fundraising
