Nonprofits are hoping Giving Tuesday can bring a surge in donations and a reversal of a recent decline in charitable giving.
The annual giving day started in 2012 as a day to do good. Since then, it's turned into a major player in the bottom line of nonprofits.
"I love the leverage of the masses," said Ray Merenstein, Executive Director of National Alliance on Mental Illness Colorado and the owner of a consulting firm that helps nonprofits with fundraising. "Think about a stadium where there's 80,000, 90,000 people, and one person starts the wave and everyone else starts the wave. That's what happens with giving on a Giving Tuesday. ... It's, 'Wow, if they're doing it, perhaps I should do it too.'"
But that wave of giving hasn't been as thunderous recently. U.S. charitable giving topped $557 billion in 2023, according to a report from Giving USA, but that was down 2.1% from 2022 when adjusted for inflation.
Merenstein says part of the reason for the decline is people are thinking more about how they want to give.
"Our deep belief is that people are more sophisticated and more intentional about where their dollars are going," Merenstein said. "They want to see high impact, high experience for their dollars, and whether that means personal engagement or massive numbers that they're impacting. They're just more sophisticated donors overall before they make that choice of where to spend their discretionary funds."
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The economic climate also contributes to if and how much people are willing to give, according to Una Osili, the Associate Dean for Research and International Programs in the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University.
"When we look at the giving numbers, they tend to reflect the health and overall strength of the economy," Osili said. "The part that has been less positive has been the role of inflation which has had a dampening effect on giving."
Osili believes nonprofits could see an uptick in donations because inflation has fallen over the past year.
"Americans give when they feel financially and economically secure," Osili said.
Last year, 34 million adults donated an estimated $3.1 billion on Giving Tuesday. That total dollar amount was up slightly from 2022, but the number of donors was down 10% from the prior year.
