What is Giving Tuesday?
Founded in 2012, Giving Tuesday is a nonprofit organization and “global generosity movement” that inspires people to give back. Each year on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, people from over 85 countries make charitable donations, volunteer at local nonprofits or perform simple acts of kindness within their communities. And in many cases, participants post about their good deeds or champion their causes on social media using the hashtag #GivingTuesday.
“[Giving Tuesday] was really meant to be a very simple idea—a day to give back following two days of consumption,” Asha Curran, CEO of the Giving Tuesday organization, told Newsweek. “And social media was in a very nascent phase [at the time], so it was also an experiment to see if social media could be used to harness the power of good.”
How Does Giving Tuesday Work?
Curran describes the Giving Tuesday organization as a “relatively small” nonprofit with a “hybrid structure.” However, thousands of partners and volunteers from around the world help “carry the mission forward.”
“We’re global … [but] we’re not decentralized,” Curran said. “We call ourselves ‘distributed’ because we do have a central organization [with] a mission, a vision, a strategy, employees … and then we have this hybrid structure where we have hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who are not on our payroll who are doing the work” to raise money and get the word out about Giving Tuesday.
Since its inception, Giving Tuesday has raised $10 billion worldwide. But Jon Biedermann with GiveSmart, an online fundraising and donor management platform that works directly with Giving Tuesday, says the holiday is about more than raising money.
“It’s a global celebration of philanthropy, charity…it’s not necessarily about giving money, but it is about giving back, whether that’s volunteering or doing random acts of kindness,” Biedermann told Newsweek.
“It’s bipartisan…it’s not divisive [and] it builds community,” Biedermann continued. “And that’s something that we need now more than ever.”
How to Participate in Giving Tuesday
In addition to donating money to charitable organizations, Curran and Biedermann say there are plenty of low-cost things people can do to give back on Giving Tuesday, such as creating little free libraries, making dinner for a neighbor or donating cans of food to local food pantries.
Curran also says vocalizing public support for a good cause is another great way to give back.
“Say I don’t have the resources to give a lot this Giving Tuesday, but I really feel passionate about a cause…I get out there and talk about that cause because I know that I’m going to get other people to direct their support to it,” Curran said.
Giving Tuesday Stories
Curran has doubtless heard hundreds of inspirational Giving Tuesday stories during her tenure with the organization. But one story, in particular, brought her to tears.
“A whole town [in Brazil] did a Giving Tuesday campaign, and part of their campaign revolved around volunteering at a school that was in an incredibly impoverished area,” she said. “And when the students of that school became aware that that was happening, they said, ‘We don’t just want to be the recipients of charity—we want to be the givers, too.’
“And so on Giving Tuesday, people volunteered at their school…and the students volunteered reading poetry to elderly people at a local nursing home.”
Biedermann added that he once had the privilege of watching people post about Giving Tuesday on social media in real-time—an experience he called “humbling.”
“[Giving Tuesday’s HQ] had this 5-LCD display out with the world, and posts would fly from somewhere in Africa, Europe [and the] Middle East,” he said, adding that a ticker measured billions of social media impressions that year.
“Just understanding that [this movement] was catching on like wildfire was very humbling to see unfold,” Biedermann continued. “And everybody can be a part of it.”
This year’s Giving Tuesday is November 29, 2022. For more information about how to participate, visit GivingTuesday.org.
