By Maddie Orton
Arts Correspondent
For the third year in a row, non-profits are seeking their piece of the holiday spending pie with Giving Tuesday. 92nd Street Y helped founded the campaign in 2012. Asha Curran is director of the organization’s Center for Innovation and Social Impact.
“We looked at Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how there’s a big powerful community around strengthening the retail sector on those days and we thought there was a real opportunity to create a new community around giving,” Curran said.
The end of the year is when non-profits make their final fundraising push. It ties in with the spirit of the holidays and allows supporters to get their tax deductible donations in before the end of the calendar year.
Gary Siepser of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey organized a collective of local non-profits to participate in the Giving Tuesday campaign.
“The beauty of Giving Tuesday is that it lets every organization use it in a way that will work best for itself,” he said.
Gina Plotino is vice president of programs and operations at Bergen County’s United Way. All of their end-of-the-year fundraising is focused on Giving Tuesday.
“But more exciting to me was the opportunity through the social media that is the platform for Giving Tuesday, to be able to reach young givers — those who are just starting to make their charitable contributions, so that maybe we could foster their philanthropy, educate them as philanthropists and make them life-long givers,” she said.
#Unselfie– Social media plays a large role in Giving Tuesday by design.
“People want to talk. They want to connect on social media, they want to communicate and know what other people are doing. This is a way for them to connect around something that makes everyone feel good, which is making a difference in the lives of those around us,” Curran said.
Non-profits are, understandably, on board as well.
“This year, we’re at over 20,000 partners just in the U.S., and thousands more around the world,” Curran said. “Since its inception in 2012, we’ve seen online donations on the day after Cyber Monday go up 270 percent.”
It’s a great gift for charity organizations. But the opportunity to create an ongoing relationship with supporters is the real present.
“What we’re really interested in doing is getting to know you, helping you to understand the impact that charitable organizations in the community make on people’s lives everyday, and to help you to feel good about supporting that,” Plotino said.
It’s still too soon to know how non-profits fared on this day of donations, but Siepser says it will be a learning experience for the group. And they’ll reconvene in January to get a head start on next year’s Giving Tuesday.