Funding

Nov. 29, 2018 12:22 pm

Giving Tuesday 2018 results: How did Philly nonprofits make out?

DonorPerfect VP Jon Biedermann discusses giving trends, Support Center for Child Advocates' Tracy Buchholz dissects her strategy and a handful of other charitable orgs share their fundraising totals.

Support Center for Child Advocates' Giving Tuesday 2018 gift drive.

(Photo by Mithun Das)

The seventh annual Giving Tuesday has come and gone. How did the nonprofit sector do?

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that $380 million was raised for charitable causes from 4 million people on Nov. 27, 2018.

Facebook said Wednesday that its users donated over $125 million to on-site fundraisers on the day, compared to about $45 million donated on 2017’s Giving Tuesday. The media company and Paypal had pledged to match $7 million in donations made on the site; it hit the goal by 9:05 a.m. (Last year’s $2 million was gone by mid-morning.)

Fort Washington-based donor management B2B company DonorPerfect, which released a Giving Tuesday resources guide before the holiday, saw an increase, too. VP of Fundraising Products Jon Biedermann said 3,367 of its roughly 10,000 international nonprofit clients participated this year.

That’s 27 percent more than in 2017 — but, “honestly,” he said, DonorPerfect also saw about that much of an increase in its client load from last year, so the growth can’t be attributed to heightened interest Giving Tuesday, specifically, for certain.

Overall, DonorPerfect clients raised over $35 million. Gifts ranged from $1.4 million to $4.

Biedermann spent the day at Giving Tuesday headquarters: 92nd Street Y in New York City, where the event was founded in 2012. Screens showed real-time data visualizations for social media impressions (12.5 billion total) and original social media posts (600,000 total) about the day.

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Is Giving Tuesday the biggest fundraising day of DonorPerfect’s year? Biedermann said for the past three years or so, it’s been number two — first is always Dec. 31, thanks to the flurry of end-of-year appeals.

But “we do not know what’s going to happen this year,” he said, thanks to the passage of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: The new tax law, signed on Dec. 22, 2017, could deliver a financial bruising to nonprofits, though the full affects of that change will be determined at the end of this year. Check out some resources on how the law impacts nonprofits from the National Council of Nonprofits here.

But back to Giving Tuesday: Locally, we saw dozens of nonprofits push day-specific fundraising appeals — and lots of celebrations of success, too.

Support Center for Child Advocates (SCCA)was one. Back in May, Communications Associate Tracy Buchholz presented a case study of how her nonprofit was able to drastically up its 2017 Giving Tuesday earnings at Generocity’s Tech in the Commons session on social media for action. The big lessons then:

This time around, Buchholz wrote in an email on Wednesday, the nonprofit raised over $23,000 from 86 donors. How? Matches from 15 board members for a total of $4,300, plus lots of media coverage and appearances by local politicians, including State Rep. Brian Sims, State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and Mayor Jim Kenney, at its concurrent toy drive.

“I also invited Gritty but he never got back to us (true story),” Buchholz said.

Most large gifts came via email — and indeed, Biedermann said email asks are generally 30 times more effective than social media asks. SCCA staffers were also more active in sharing news of the campaign and event.

Next year, Buchholz said, she hopes the nonprofit will reach out to more young people to give, even at small amounts: “A small donation is better than no donation. Unless you’re giving your time to volunteer. That’s just priceless.”

Here’s how a handful of other Greater Philadelphia-based nonprofits made out on Tuesday:

Playworks PA

Community Volunteers in Medicine

Red Paw Emergency Relief Team

City Year Philadelphia

Episcopal Community Services of Philadelphia

Fund for the School District of Philadelphia

Lutheran Settlement House

Sister Cities Girlchoir

First Up

The early education training nonprofit reported raising $1,721, which will support its new Phyllis Kohn Scholarship Fund.

“Thanks to you,” reads an email to subscribers, “early childhood educators in Southeastern PA will have the opportunity to participate in professional development opportunities such as First Up’s 2019 Annual Conference from March 1-2, Equity Starts EarlyYour donations will help First Up make our event accessible and inclusive for all professionals in the field, regardless of financial need.”

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