Philanthropists are coming to the end of a year that featured several claims on their pocketbooks. The year started with atypically high inflation rates and featured several significant weather-related disasters, ongoing crises in the Middle East and Ukraine and an acrimoniously contested, highly polarizing and wildly expensive election season.

This year, GivingTuesday, which is held the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, will be on the latest possible calendar date — December 3. That’s right when folks are facing the financial demands of the holiday travel, gift and entertainment season. Asking whether funders are facing if not compassion fatigue at least financial fatigue is understandable.

Count the Salvation Army among organizations where leaders are bullish on the day, despite the late date directly impacting one of its unique fundraising channels — the bell ringers who stand aside its trademark Red Kettles.

“We do everything we can to promote GivingTuesday,” Salvation Army National Community Relations And Development Secretary Dale Bannon told The NonProfit Times. “It is the second-highest day for digital gifts all year round, second only to December 31.”

This year, GivingTuesday will play an even more important role in The Salvation Army USA’s end-of-year fortunes. Red Kettles typically bring in an average $2.7 million a day. “When you have five less days, that could be a loss of $13 million to The Salvation Army,” Bannon said.

The Salvation Army leaders set an aggressive goal of $3 million for GivingTuesday 2024. If the organization hits the target, that level will supersede the $2.71 million generated through 16,364 digital transactions two years ago, and $2.48 million raised through 17,696 digital transactions last year. Part of Bannon’s bullishness stems from the higher number of donors, even though the average donation slipped from $166 two years ago to $140 last year.

The increase in the total number of individuals interacting with The Salvation Army on GivingTuesday holds out hope for an overall revenue jump. The five fewer days of bell ringing, alongside demonstrations of increased need, will be incorporated into GivingTuesday messaging. Bannon hopes urgency will spur donations.

The extra days between the election fundraising season, along with the turn of the calendar page from November to December, might work in participating organizations’ advantage … but possibly to the detriment of end-of-year giving. “You’ll have more time between the election and GivingTuesday for people to feel a little bit of reprieve, to stop getting all of the political solicitations,” Soraya Alexander, president of platform Classy from GoFundMe where she is also chief operating officer, told The NonProfit Times. “So maybe you’ve got more appetite to give than if it was coming right off of an election.”

The temporal distance between election season and GivingTuesday, however, might have an unfortunate counterbalance when it comes to December 31 giving. “If you are a nonprofit which has just gone out with a big GivingTuesday push, and you’re trying to get people to activate again, I worry about whether supporters will feel like ‘I just gave this month.’” Alexander said. “It feels very soon. There’s something about a different month and a little bit more time passing that makes it feel easier to donate again.”

Personal economics might play more of a role than external factors such as elections. “Inflation probably is top of mind,” Trent Ricker, chief strategy officer at Allegiance Group + Pursuant said. “It has impacted fundraising over the last couple of years. We’ve seen some headwinds for the individual giving that typically informs GivingTuesday at the lower end of the pyramid, with the smaller gifts coming from lots of people. When people look at their pocketbooks, I think that’s probably still got the bigger impact.”

For all this, Ricker sees growth for GivingTuesday, albeit growth that will more or less keep up with inflation. He noted that year-over-year growth rates have ranged between 0.6% and 15% for GivingTuesday in the United States during the past three years. “Given some of the economic headwinds we’ve experienced, if I had to guess [this year will be] probably something in the neighborhood of as low as a 3% lift to as high as maybe a 7% or 8% lift. But I wouldn’t be surprise if it is flatter.”

Flat is the watchword at GlobalGiving, a nonprofit that connects funders with grassroots projects around the world. The organization is anticipating $3 million in donations from GivingTuesday 2024, consistent with the level of years past, according to Chief Executive Officer Victoria Vrana.

Part of the reason for consistency is two countervailing forces. “You’ve got recurring donors for whom GivingTuesday is a habit,” Vrana explained. But the activity of repeat donors is offset by a psychographic trend. “One of the reasons is the declining religiosity in the U.S., and the connection between that and declining giving,” she said.

“With religion, you have a moment when you give, or a tithing target,” Vrana continued. “What GivingTuesday has done in culture and is continuing to do as it grows in strength is create that moment. It creates that habit, it creates that structure.”

Research by GlobalGiving shows that individual discretionary spending is often closely linked with giving behavior. Said Vrana: “Discretionary spending is up this year, so that’s a good indicator.”

The intensity of the election will likely boost the day’s fortunes, according to Vrana. “Donors often want to find ways to take action after an election, and we’re trying to make that really easy. We’ve preemptively identified a lot of nonprofits in our community that work on cause areas related to election topics. We’re working to help make it even easier for donors to find the causes and the organizations they might care about on our platform.”

At DonorsChoose, a platform that allows donors to contribute directly to classroom projects, Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer Katie Bisbee is similarly holding the line with a cautious $5 million forecast, the same forecast her organization made in 2023 when it ultimately pulled in $6 million.

“After elections, folks invest in their local communities and want to give locally,” Bisbee said. “We’ve got public school teachers in 89% of schools across the country requesting materials they need to teach their students. Causes that have really local footprints will benefit.”

This might beg the question as to why Bisbee’s organization is holding its forecasting in line with last year’s level. “Giving in general has been slower for us and a lot of organizations over the last few years,” she said. “There are a couple of reasons for giving being slower, or staying the same, and one of them is hyper-urgency. People giving to natural disasters this fall is a bigger concern than election giving.”

Disasters do probably share the same portion of people’s wallet as giving to charity in December, according to Bisbee. “The lines are blurred a little bit between giving to a friend who needs help or someone’s [classroom] wish list. We anticipate those trends holding,” she said.

Some locales dodge the question of GivingTuesday bumping up against the holiday season by holding nonprofit-focused days at other times of the year. Sarasota County in Florida held a 24-hour virtual giving event between noon on April 9 to noon on April 10 which generated $17.4 million. That amount did not quite top the high of 2020 when the day raised just less than $19.2 million but it exceeded the $16.2 raised during 2022. The event was not held in 2023. Give Miami Day, which was held on November 21, pulled in $39.5 million, topping the record-setting $34 million raised during 2023.

“The other unique part about Florida is we’ve had three hurricanes just this season, two of which were in large metro areas, along with tornados that came as a result of one of those hurricanes,” said Sabeen Perwaiz, president and CEO of the Florida Nonprofit Alliance. “I would be curious about donor fatigue because there’s been a sense of urgency post-hurricane for taking care of communities and setting up disaster funds,” she said.

Some Florida nonprofits have a readymade local lead-in to GivingTuesday. “We had Amendment Four on the ballot [the November election proposal to codify abortion access into law], and if you’re an organization that deals with women’s reproductive health in Florida, it would be a missed opportunity to not utilize GivingTuesday to get more capital for your organization to continue to do that work,” Perwaiz said.

Individuals might be spurred to contribute, but managers at corporations, who tend to lean toward conservatism, could be having second thoughts. “I think we’ll see nervousness from corporate engagement because they don’t know what’s coming next in the United States,” said Marnie Webb, CEO of TechSoup, a nonprofit that facilitates nonprofits’ ability to take advantage of software, hardware and a variety of technology services.

While the focus is on individual giving, corporations also play a role on the day. “I would assume some people activate their GivingTuesday gifts through a corporate matching program, so that they’re doubling their gifts,” Webb continued.

Part of that nervousness might be the ongoing legislative battle to pass federal laws that would allow the new administration to easily strip nonprofit status from organizations that fall out of favor with it. “That’s going to make corporations nervous,” Webb said, and that nervousness could play a significant role, especially in 2025 if the legislation is passed. “It’s like, am I matching to an organization whose status is going to be revoked?”

Webb cited trends in corporate purpose reports to back her claim. According to The State of Corporate Purpose 2023, a report from Benevity Impact Labs, there has been a movement toward “quiet giving.” Per last year’s report, “90% of [corporate social responsibility] leaders say companies should spend more time acting on social justice issues through their own practices and programs versus making bold statements.” As of the 2024 report, “caution is now outpacing courage” as company leaders reflect on how they use their voice and resources in pursuit of having impact.

Coming off a highly charged election cycle, coupled with threats to nonprofits, might spur some donations, which would at least mitigate losses due to economic climate or corporate caution. “I don’t think the energy is diminished, and so you might see something like an equal or increased number of donations from an equal or increased number of people, but a smaller overall dollar amount,” Webb said. “Overall, we’re seeing a contraction of funds to nonprofit organizations.”

Webb echoed Vrana when she noted there is always room for countervailing forces. As Webb observed, “The stock market is having a pretty good moment.”

The people closest to the trends surrounding GivingTuesday are bullish, including those nearest to the data feeding into the predictions.

“Giving fatigue is a myth. It does not exist,” GivingTuesday Chief Data Officer Woodrow Rosenbaum said. “People are not tired of giving. That doesn’t mean people don’t get tired of the same old message over and over again from a nonprofit. It is important we engage people in a way that is inspiring for action, but there is untapped opportunity. We are not in a scarcity environment.”

Negative economic factors could act as potential suppressors, but Rosenbaum believes untapped opportunity within people can outweigh these factors, provided nonprofits are diligent in asking. The heightened election-related giving should be viewed as an indicator of potential strength.

“The risk is that fundraisers are going to sit it out, because what we see is people who give to political campaigns are much more likely to also support multiple nonprofit organizations compared to other people. We do not see any cannibalization, either the macroeconomic data or in the behavior,” said Rosenbaum.

GivingTuesday’s own data show a direct correlation between solicitation and donation. Donations declined when solicitations slacked during second quarter 2024. The public responded when nonprofits amped up their solicitations during the third quarter.

“Election fundraising has not dampened nonprofit fundraising,” Rosenbaum said. “If anything, we see people wanting to respond and have agency over the things that they care about. We have a very engaged population right now, and that tends to correlate to lots of action. People are looking for the opportunity to make change when they’re feeling either concern or elation. When people are thinking about issues in their community, they’re more likely to respond.”

While Rosenbaum was not willing to make a specific quantitative prediction, he did point to the continued acceleration of nonprofit fundraising throughout and after the election season — a solicitation rate which the data show correlate with results.

There was one prediction Rosenbaum was boldly willing to make. “I’m very confident it will be the biggest day for donor acquisition all year,” he said. “It engages lots more people. Those people are more likely to give again and are retained at a higher-than-average rate. This is what grass roots engagement and collective giving gets us: the fact that the engagement on GivingTuesday is more diverse and prolific.”

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Source From Non Profit Times