Charities looking to return of big day for giving

The nonprofit sector hopes Tuesday is a repeat of last year, when Americans donated billions of dollars in one day to keep struggling charities afloat amid the pandemic.

GivingTuesday, as it’s called, is a fairly new event, owing its 2012 founding to a small group of protesters in New York City who wanted to create a day of what they called “radical generosity” and philanthropy.

Donations to nonprofits have boomed every year since, as the event spread out across the globe and became a fundraising staple for thousands of charities.

Last year was the best yet, with one-day donations eclipsing $2.5 billion — a 34 percent increase over 2019, according to Charity Navigator, which evaluates and rates nonprofits for potential donors. Nearly one-quarter of all who donated last year did so for the first time, a promising sign for many nonprofits whose survival depends on replenishing older, graying donor bases.

Also encouraging to the nonprofit sector: the number of charities receiving donations increased by 25 percent year-over-year.

The murder of George Floyd and other unarmed Black men also led to a surge in donations to racial justice initiatives, doubling the annual budget of one Houston nonprofit that works towards racial equity.

“The donations were coming from everywhere, all over the United States,” said Cherry Steinwender, executive director of the Center for the Healing of Racism.

But, Steinwender said, donations have begun to slow, leaving her and other nonprofit executives concerned that last year’s surge of giving was a one-time event. With inflation eating into household budgets, charities worry that more money will go to grocery and utility bills and less to charities.

Last year, Covenant House Texas, a small Houston-based shelter for homeless youth,

brought in about one-tenth of its annual budget on GivingTuesday. Most of it was in small donations less than $50.

Most of Texas’ 92,000 or so nonprofits are small, with many of their budgets totaling less than six figures. So, small donors — the ones most susceptible to inflation and economic setbacks — can have a big impact.

“We look at the $10 donor the same way we do that anonymous $10,000 donor — because that ($10) is three meals one day,” said Leslie Bourne, the group’s executive director. “It helped tremendously. But you just never know” if it was an anomaly.

This year, Covenant House is working to expand its digital outreach. To keep in touch with loyal donors, it held Zoom coffees as well as other virtual activities to keep them engaged during the pandemic.

Other charities have also ramped up digital outreach ahead of GivingTuesday, including the Houston Food Bank, which last year made international headlines as cars lined up outside for a mile, waiting for food assistance in the early days of the pandemic.

Rising food prices are adding to the strain on working poor and low-income families, making another strong fundraising season vital to the Food Bank ahead of the holidays, when demand tends to jump.

“Our fundraising was just overwhelming last year,” said Heather Icenogle, director of annual giving and events for the Food Bank. But, she added, the economic situations of many families are still far from pre-pandemic conditions.

Tim Winkler, founder of the South Carolina fundraising consultancy Winkler Group, said he does not expect donations to decline significantly this GivingTuesday.

Even so, he takes issue with some parts of GivingTuesday, which he said can distract nonprofits from their established donor bases as they chase newer — and often younger — contributors.

He said many organizations last year brought in significantly more revenue but that many did so by giving less attention to consistent donors who are more likely to write big checks or convince friends to donate.

Now, he said, charities should be focused on ensuring that new pool of donors is, indeed, more than a blip on the radar.

“Whatever the cause, across the board, people are sustaining their support from last year,” he said. “But there’s still so much uncertainty.”