Online shopping on Black Friday hit a record high this year, with consumers spending nearly $12 billion in one day. This 4.1% increase from last year is surprising given widespread concerns about the affordability of groceries, housing, and healthcare costs. Americans’ willingness to spend may bode well for GivingTuesday. In 2024, GivingTuesday reported $3.6 billion raised and 36.1 million participants, giving time or money. It also reported a 7% increase in the number of people making financial gifts, bucking the national decline in individual, lower-level donors.
The charitable sector raised nearly $600 billion last year, so the claim that we still need more donors, and those at the $50, $25, and even $5 levels, might sound strange. Yet, these donors are the backbone of philanthropy. Small, widespread gifts signal confidence in a nonprofit organization’s mission and that a cause, such as an animal shelter, has broad public support. They help nonprofit groups protect their 501(c)(3) status as public charities by passing the “Public Support Test,” which requires at least one-third of an organization’s donors to come from the general public. A large enough pool of recurring donations offers relative stability, so a nonprofit organization need not be reliant on a small number of large donors or on federal funding.
