Today is #GivingTuesday™ (I think you're required to spell it with the hashtag and the trademark).
The idea for this holiday is pretty straightforward: There's a day for shopping like crazy (Black Friday), and a day for shopping online like crazy (Cyber Monday). Why not a day for giving?
I'm all for anything that encourages people to give. But there's a problem with Giving Tuesday: It's not real. It was made up by marketers. It's an attempt to create something that isn't there.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday weren't cooked up by marketers. Both of those days are named for actions lots of real people were already doing. Marketers do their best to connect with those behaviors.
Trying to concoct a new behavior-based "Day" out of thin air is a tall order. You could spend billions promoting it and not any meaningful difference.
I wish the creators of Giving Tuesday had spent some time thinking about actual donor behavior, because they would have realized there's already a "Giving Tuesday." It's on a Monday this year. It's December 31.
Online giving spikes on December 31. It's the largest giving day of the year for most fundraisers online.
Why try to force donors into an artificial behavior, when you could simply observe what they already do and encourage more of them to do more of it? That's how you can really get traction. And revenue.
