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Does #GivingTuesday Work?
Newsletter

Does #GivingTuesday Work?

On November 28, you can expect a deluge of unsolicited emails. That might not seem out of the ordinary, but this particular day will bring a batch of messages that all have two things in common: nonprofits will send them and they will all use the same phrase in the subject line, “Giving Tuesday.” Social media, too, will be awash in the hashtag version, #GivingTuesday. Expect to see it all over Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, and X (r.i.p Twitter).

First launched in 2012—as a collective endeavor by the 92d Street Y and the UN Foundation—#GivingTuesday has become a global campaign to invite more charity and volunteering. Last year, in its tenth iteration, the event accounted for $3.1 billion in charitable giving in the US alone.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for being impressed by this accomplishment. I’d also caution that Giving Tuesday might not be as impressive as it seems.

To be clear, I’m focusing on the day, #GivingTuesday, and not the nonprofit, GivingTuesday.org. A few years ago, the movement garnered enough support from major givers like the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott, that it spun out into its own entity focused on enhancing radical generosity around the world. They now have multiple programs focused on youth and adults in a variety of regions. The programs reflect novel ways to inspire more generosity.

The day of #GivingTuesday, however, probably isn’t doing as much as we think. Maybe there’s value in having everyone celebrate a day of giving. But if there is, then it’s not clear what that value is.

The question I keep asking is this: If we want more charitable giving, is #GivingTuesday the answer?

Considering the Counterfactual

This question is an invitation to use counterfactual thinking, a core paradigm of all impact measurement. In evaluating everything from medical treatments to government programs, we don’t really know whether a well-intended effort is working unless we understand what the world would be like without it. The key is to measure causal inference—does A cause B?—using tools like randomized control trials.

In this context, the question is: What if #GivingTuesday never existed?

You might be surprised to learn that scholars haven’t answered the counterfactual question for #GivingTuesday. Despite ten years of data, including that offered by the Giving Tuesday Data Commons, there are no published studies assessing the giving day’s impact using a counterfactual approach.

In fairness, a randomized control trial for #GivingTuesday would be quite difficult because there are so many variables to control. This is a common challenge for advocacy programs. The impact of a worldwide effort like #GivingTuesday is difficult to measure.

There is an annual #GivingTuesday report, but a broader context actually dampens the otherwise impressive numbers. Take the top-line number for example: $3.1 billion in US donations last year. That amounts to 0.06% of the total charitable giving—$499.3 billion—in 2022, or roughly two days worth of giving if you divide the total over the year. (Of course, charitable giving isn’t spread evenly over the year and the most popular days for giving continue to be at the end of December to capture tax deductions for the 10% of Americans who still itemize.)

There’s little evidence that #GivingTuesday actually increases the total charitable giving much at all.

More importantly, there’s little evidence that #GivingTuesday actually increases the total charitable giving much at all. The event claims a larger share of giving each year—up by 15% compared to 2021. But this doesn’t mean total giving increased. The more likely result is that #GivingTuesday changes the timing of a person’s giving instead of increasing the amount that person gives.

Although charitable giving in the US does shift up or down from one year to the next, the defining trait is how little it changes over time compared to the overall economy. For as long as we have reliable data, measures show that Americans give around 2% of GDP. Even massive things like tax policy only change when people give and not how much. Academics and fundraising professionals have long wrestled with this stubborn statistic, and there’s no counterfactual evidence that #GivingTuesday has moved the needle to greater giving, even if it’s claiming an increasing share of the giving that does happen.

Making Things Worse

Like any major endeavor, #GivingTuesday has its critics. Common complaints include favoring large organizations over small ones, disfavoring minority causes, and adding stress to an already busy time of year for nonprofits.

There are two criticisms, though, that are especially important. The first is the intensity of competition for donors on #GivingTuesday, and the second is the consumerist approach to the cause.

As more nonprofits participate, the competition for donors gets even sharper on #GivingTuesday. For this reason, you won’t be surprised to hear nonprofit managers complain about the day. If you search Google for the term, you mostly get pitches by fundraising consultants offering to help you raise more money.

But the problem could be even greater. Research shows that as competition for donors increases, fundraising becomes less efficient. In other words, the bigger #GivingTuesday gets, the more wasteful fundraising becomes as nonprofits fight for their share of the 2%.

Charitable giving is treated like an impulse buy instead of a thoughtful strategy.

The other concern is how #GivingTuesday campaigns behave. They rarely focus on building enduring relationships with donors, but instead are designed to be shareable on social media. Charitable giving is treated like an impulse buy instead of a thoughtful strategy.

The original idea of #GivingTuesday was to be a counterbalance to the consumerism of Black Friday, but nonprofits instead campaign in an especially consumerist way: offering donor matches that give the sense of a great deal, using urgent offers that expire on the day, and deploying social proof marketing through shares and likes. Compared to something more meaningful like a monthly donation to a carefully chosen charity, #GivingTuesday feels like Black Friday deal shopping. It encourages the opposite behavior that we need from donors who ought to be more impact-oriented and strategic in their generosity

What Would Actually Increase Giving

Even though the relative share of charitable giving is stubbornly stuck at 2% of GDP, there are more recent trends changing philanthropy in larger ways than #GivingTuesday can handle.

Most recently, inflation and other economic pressures led to a real decline in charitable giving, something that’s happened only a few other times in the last four decades. These are not permanent conditions, however, so the pattern isn’t likely to be long-term.

There are two other changes to American charity, though, that are worrisome. The first is the increasing concentration of wealth in the United States. A larger share of the economy in the hands of a smaller few will inevitably change the landscape of philanthropy, including the total amount giving, the timing of giving, and the kinds of causes receiving support. Donations by the wealthy, for example, favor large organizations over small ones, even if the small ones have higher relative impact. It’s simply easier to write one big check than many small ones.

The second big change is a decline in religious activity. Regular participation in religious worship has long been one of the strongest predictors of charitable giving, even if you remove donations made to churches. Community connections that bring us proximate to the needs of others simply induce more giving. People give more when they are asked in personal ways, and most religious worship involves a call to share with others.

Both of these—concentration of wealth and declining religiosity—would predict less charity by everyday households, and that’s exactly what’s been happening. Less than 50% of Americans are engaging in philanthropy for the first time ever measured. Thus far, large donors have made up the difference, but we don’t yet know what will come as the trend continues.

People need more money to give and community connections that encourage giving on a regular basis.

To induce more charitable giving, the needed changes are obvious. People need more money to give and community connections that encourage giving on a regular basis. Obvious though they may be, these problems are not going to change much on any given Tuesday.

Of course, none of this means that people shouldn’t give, or even that they should skip #GivingTuesday. What all donors should do, though, is give thoughtfully and strategically, focused on how their gifts and time can have a lasting impact. That kind of giving is a very good deal.

Successfully Navigating #GivingTuesday

So what does this all mean for someone who does want to participate in the day of giving? I recommend these three things:

  1. Find an organization that measures outcomes, not just outputs. (ex. In education, pick an organization that reports improved grades, not just the number of students enrolled.)
  2. Instead of a one-time donation, choose an organization that you’ll support in the long-term. Set up a recurring monthly donation that automatically comes out of your bank account.
  3. Spend some of your giving budget on a book written by an expert. You can’t learn everything about every topic, so invest some time getting deeper knowledge of the impact area that most interests you. It will make you a better giver.

Good Deeds and Broken Systems
Newsletter

Good Deeds and Broken Systems

Among the many pathological features of social media, there’s an argument that happens whenever we celebrate a generous act. Here’s a recent example that I found in 30 seconds of searching Twitter.

Fred Tabares is a middle-school art teacher who teaches in an area where many of his students can’t afford supplies. “Mister T,” as he’s known, also works weekends as a dish washer at a local restaurant, and he used what he earned there to help buy art supplies for his over 400 students. A heroic and lovely act that’s worthy of praise.

One publication framed the story this way:

Basically on cue, another tells Mister T’s story with this:

Both tweets are true, by the way, but they tell very different stories. (Even though the underlying article is word-for-word identical!) The odds are pretty good that your thoughts about it lined up with one of these two perspectives. We're inclined to either praise good deeds or denounce broken systems. Together, though, they reveal a truth about how help is needed, how it’s provided, and what you should do about it.

Systemic vs. Ministered Help

All the help that happens in the world generally happens in one of two ways:

1. Systemic Help. We have policies, funding, programs, or the like to address a persistent need. For examples, think of things like safety nets, scholarships, blood drives, and banking rules.

2. Ministered Help. Not meant in a religious sense, ministered help is given when one person attends to the needs of another. For this kind of help, think of rides to the airport, rent covered, study groups, and shoulders to cry on.

Much of the help that happens in the world reflects both kinds, like with a case worker helping a family through unemployment. The system hires the case worker, and then the case worker provides the help in a ministered way to the family.

But, much of the help in the world is one OR the other. Consider regulations that reduce pollution, for example. Individual people might implement technology to reduce pollution from a specific coal plant, but no one is custom delivering the cleaner air for any of us to breathe. There is no ministration in such rules, but they can reduce air pollution that kills a shocking number of people each year.

Humanity Needs Both Kinds of Help

You might be in the camp that bristles at stories like this one about Mister T. Imagine if, instead of having to work a dishwashing job so his students can make art, he had a district-provided budget. School teachers already are paid too little, so Mister T’s sacrifice exposes an injustice.

But it’s impossible for systemic help to address every possible need. That’s because every system has gaps, unintended oversights that leave people neglected. For example, I could set up a hotline to help people through their breakups (and charge less than my competition), but most people facing a breakup either wouldn't know about it or would prefer to talk to a friend.

In fact, systemic help is sometimes less efficient and effective than ministered help. People who see a need when it appears are often best positioned to make things better. This is why someone who has a financial setback is more likely to turn to friends and family before they turn to safety net programs, even ones that are well-run. (Here's a fascinating breakdown of how Americans give and receive financial help.) Getting help from those close to us is just faster and easier.

But ministered help doesn’t scale like systems. We can’t reasonably expect there to be enough teachers like Mister T to provide art supplies by moonlighting. In fact, the tough conditions that teachers face persistently gets us fewer of them than we need. To consider more examples, not everyone who struggles financially can call their parents, or who contemplates suicide can call a friend, or who breathes smoggy air can escape what they’re inhaling.

What We Can Do About It

For humanity to flourish, we will always need both kinds of help, systemic and ministered. Knowing that, what can we do about it?

First, here’s what NOT to do. Don’t shunt people like Mister T to the side and condescendingly tweet, “That’s generous, but it should never have been needed in the first place! The people running that school district should be ashamed.” Don’t attack the people honoring Mister T for his abundant generosity or sharing what he did. And then don’t scroll on past the story, never lifting a finger even giving those kids or Mister T another thought.

Instead, here’s how to get better at both kinds of help:

1. For systemic help, first realize that the problems are complex. They’re big and heavy and need lots of people pushing. Go find the people who are already doing that well to help them push. Then, as you help the experts, learn more about the problem so you become an expert too. You’ll also need to get good at organizing things, telling compelling stories, and being patient with setbacks.

2. For ministered help, celebrate and be inspired by the good examples. Get to know the people around you by spending time with them. Take good care of yourself and those close to you so that you're better positioned to help others. As you do these things, opportunities will come. Act when they appear.

Finally, don't let indignation feel like a solution. Our social media anger is no more than debris washed along in the flood.

As for Mister T, what an amazing act of love and dedication. The attention it brought has inspired others, including a $10,000 donation to pay for his students’ art supplies. The more people we can get who act like him, the better.

Things to Read/Watch/Hear

How effective altruism went from a niche movement to a billion-dollar force

Effective Altruism has been in the news lately thanks to Will McAskill's new book, What We Owe the Future. If you're curious to learn more about EA, this article gives a brief history and good assessment of what it's all about today.

The Best Way to Win a Negotiation, According to a Harvard Business Professor

I normally roll my eyes at the negotiation advice you can find on YouTube, because it's often just superstitious posturing. But this video has excellent, research-backed advice, along with an exceptional moral insight at the end. Worth the watch.

How Money Changes the Way You Think and Feel

An abundance of money comes with real psychological emotional risks, including reduced empathy, clouded moral judgment, and addiction. A good summary of research on the topic.

Promotional Stuff

If you haven't yet listened to my podcast episode with Dr. Naa Vanderpuye-Donton, then you're missing out on a chance to listen to a uniquely incredible person. One of my listeners had this to say about the episode:

If you have never listened to a podcast before, do NOT let this one be your first. You'll be ruined for other podcasts thinking they all are of this caliber.  
If you have been jaded by the noise of podcasters out there, this will give you hope that quality podcasts still exist.

😊 Here are some highlights I shared on Twitter, if you want to get a sense of why this episode is worth the listen.

Help Is Everywhere
Newsletter Blog the Book

Help Is Everywhere

Seeing it saves us from despair.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness."          —Howard Zinn

Why don't we know more about Cinderella's fairy godmother? We don't even know her name.

It's strange. Here's a supernatural being that has, for reasons and time unknown, kept watch over a poor, mistreated stepdaughter. And despite all of her power, Whats-Her-Name never intervenes until she can come to Cinderella's rescue just before the ball. What exactly is going on here?

Or what about the old man who helps Link in the classic Nintendo game, The Legend of Zelda? "It's dangerous to go alone," he tells the unarmed boy. And then he hands him a sword. "Take this." Why in the world is this unnamed senior citizen living in a cave and handing out weapons to minors?

Most people haven't the faintest idea of where Yoda came from, or why he's a Jedi Master. When he first appeared on movie screens in 1980, audiences just accepted the strange little alien, as-is.

I could go on.

In every version of the Monomyth—Joseph Campbell's distillation of the Hero's Journey—there is always (always!) a helper. The protagonist finds themselves alone, stretched beyond their capacity. They've left the comforts of home to undertake a great quest, only to end up out of options, strength, and faith. All hope is lost, darkness closes in…and then comes the helper.

We're all so familiar with this moment of the story that it comes to us as second-nature. As tense as those moments are, we don't give up even when the hero does. "Help is coming!" our hearts cry out. Sometimes it's the mysterious, Fairy Godmother getting Cinderella to the ball. Or it might instead be the faithful friend, like Samwise Gamgee carrying Frodo Baggins to the top of Mount Doom. Or the dying Uncle Ben giving Peter Parker the jewel of wisdom that he needs to become Spider-Man.

The helper is so common that we take them for granted. This is why you've never puzzled at the fairy godmother or wondered why Yoda is a Jedi Master. Whoever the helper might be, we're sure that in the darkest of moments Help Is Coming.

But why are we so sure?

Photo by Niels Smeets / Unsplash

Perhaps this confidence naturally comes from the fact that every story we're told sets this expectation. The tales drill it into us. We have no reason to expect anything else.

But why do we believe the stories? I think it's because of experience. I think we have intuitively learned that help is everywhere.

This may be a hard idea to accept with a world drenched in suffering. Every day:

  • Someone innocent dies at the hands of an angry man who will escape justice.
  • Cancer patients give up their last breath because no cure arrived in time.
  • People are robbed, and there's no Spider-Man to protect them.

With all these times that it didn't come, how can we still believe that Help Is Coming? It's because help is everywhere.

Help is common all over the world.

Just like suffering, helping is universal to the human experience. Despite all the evil in the world, consider:

  • Most of us never have to stare down a murderer, because we're surrounded by people we can trust.
  • Most cancer patients—two of every three!—survive the disease and live long, happy lives thanks to miracle cures developed by brilliant people.
  • You have a minuscule chance of being robbed in a given day, thanks to a whole host of public services that drive crime rates down.

We so naturally fix our gaze on suffering that we miss the reality that help is everywhere.

Here in the US in 2020, around 83 million Americans each volunteered an average of 52 hours to a local nonprofit. Americans also donated over $471 billion to charity that year. This was all, by the way, in the midst of the global pandemic.

Helping is a global phenomenon. According to a UN estimate, the amount of volunteer helping that happens around the world is roughly equivalent to 109 million full-time workers. If volunteer helpers were a country, they would be the fifth largest workforce in the world.

Photo by Joel Muniz / Unsplash`

Help is everywhere. Or in other words, we are all helpers.

For example, it is almost certainly the case that someone counts on you regularly. Your family members trust that you'll be there when they need you. Friends call you to spend time with them. Even strangers that stopped you to ask directions knew that someone would point them in the right direction.

This kind of daily, mundane help is like sunshine that makes a healthy society grow. We open the door for a stranger, put in a good word for a job applicant, and console a friend in a breakup. You've probably been helped in moments like these. But it's important to remember that you've also been the helper.

In other words—to one degree or another—you've been someone’s fairy godmother.

We can give even more and even better help.

Imagine a world without help, where none of us could be counted on. One where help isn't ever coming. Help is the only thing keeping worse things at bay.

All of this is to say: helping each other is the only way out of what's terrible in the world, and the only way of protecting what's good. And because we do live in a world still mired in too much suffering, it’s clear that we need more help.

So a critical question remains: How do we become better helpers?

The articles to appear over the coming months will be answering this question. I hope you'll find them helpful.

😁
Please share this article with those who might enjoy it. In that way, I could really use your help.
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Things to Read, Watch, or Hear

Read/Hear: Consequential Strangers

While those closest to our heart are synonymous with home, consequential strangers anchor us in the world and give us a sense of being plugged into something larger.

An exerpt from the book by Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman. This will change the way you see the brief encounters you have with the people around you.

Watch: Motivation in Hard Times

Four minutes from author John Green sharing why love is the best motivator.

Hear: Giving It Away

In this episode of his podcast, People I (Mostly) Admire, economist/author Steven Leavitt interviews John Arnold, billionaire and co-founder of one of the most generous private foundations in the world. Arnold describes with clarity why it's hard to give away billions of dollars effectively and why he and his wife won't give up trying.

Promotional Stuff

Two exciting things to share:

  1. I have a new website! It's a cleaner, faster experience and I'm quite happy with it so far.
  2. Season 2 of the How to Help Podcast is launching on Monday evening. My first interview of this season is with Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. Jonathan is an amazingly thoughtful, kind, and interesting person with a fascinating career path. It's an episode about finding  a home, for ourselves and for everyone. I hope you love it!

The Path to Conscience
Newsletter

The Path to Conscience

We're all coming to a better understanding

Less than 20 years ago, state governments were allowed to execute someone who was mentally disabled. It was only 16 years ago that states could legally execute someone who committed a crime as a child. And just 11 years ago, children as young as 13 or 14 could be sentenced to life in prison—or in other words, death in prison—even if their crime didn't involve killing someone. All of these sentences today are illegal under the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution because they are considered cruel and unusual.

Cruel and Unusual. Consider how remarkable it is that these practices were so recently acceptable, most likely during your lifetime, and are now considered so beyond the pale that they violate the sacred Constitution of the United States. How does something like this happen?

Certainly, the moral character of executing a child hasn't changed, just by virtue of the US Supreme Court's order. These judgments were always cruel, if sadly not unusual. It is that our understanding of them has changed. In the case of executing children, a mountain of science has revealed that a person's brain isn't fully developed until well into legal adulthood. The Court relied on these insights to make its decision, acknowledging the deep injustice of imposing the ultimate penalty on someone without full mental capacity. For hundreds, this realization came too late.

In a recent episode of the podcast, Revisionist History, the host Malcom Gladwell used a phrase that stood out to me: "The path to conscience." He expressed it this way:

What my younger self did not understand is that there is no perfect and easy path to conscience. Sometimes it's circuitous and full of unfortunate detours. And maybe what we owe each other is faith and patience, because some of us will take longer than others to figure out where our conscience lies.

None of us—not one—is a perfect moral judge. Our research into the typical ethical dilemmas that people face revealed over and over again that good people make bad choices. It was evident in the hundreds of examples we reviewed that everyone is at different points on their path to conscience.

This isn't to say that there should be no consequences for bad choices. But when we impose consequences as a society, we have a responsibility to make our judgments just—and we face the constant risk of moral error in our zeal for justice. We, as a people, are on a path to conscience, too.

Whatever we do, we need more humility to recognize that our particular journey on the path to conscience is always, at best, incomplete with many miles to go. We have so much to learn about what is truly good. And such humility coaxes out of us more patience and grace for others as they walk their own paths. It's not that they, or we, deserve grace; it's that we all desperately need it.

Things to Read

Mad Men. Furious Women.

A frustrating but essential read that illustrates how differently women are treated in the workplace, from compensation to harassment.

The Truth Behind the Amazon Mystery Seeds

Remember the social media freakout about mysterious seeds from China? The best explanation, a brushing scam, is far less nefarious than feared.

Sackler Family Banned from Naming Buildings

The notorious billionaires behind the OxyContin crisis have been banned by a legal settlement from getting naming rights in exchange for their donations.

Impact Highlight

There are currently around 4,500 children being held in adult prisons in the US. Compared to those in juvenile detention, these underage prisoners are nine times as likely to commit suicide. In every case, states have the capacity to hold these child prisoners in better conditions, but their sentences demand they be treated as though they were adults.

Made famous by the book Just Mercy and its author, Bryan Stevenson, the Equal Justice Initiative works to reform the criminal justice system by challenging unjust, cruel, and inequitable treatment. Their work has led directly to legal changes in how children are treated by courts, including the sentencing reform I described above. A donation to EJIsupports their staff and creates more capacity for them to meet the overwhelming needs referred to them every day.

Promotional Stuff

Would you be willing to share a story about a time that someone helped you or a time that you helped someone else?

I'm testing a survey instrument as part of a study on helping experiences, and could use your help. If you have a few moments, complete our survey. Thank you!

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