March 23, 2014 | Read Time: 1 minute
Organizers of Giving Tuesday, now in the planning phase for its third campaign, later this year, want to spark contributions long after the holidays are over. The effort last year helped charities raise at least $20-million on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
At a session this month at South by Southwest Interactive, in Austin, Henry Timms, founder of Giving Tuesday, said while the event has demonstrated its potential to jump-start year-end donations, that’s not enough to transform the giving landscape. His goal is to start a year-round push on Giving Tuesday to encourage Americans to increase the share of income they channel to charity.
He and his colleagues are enlisting economists to help them figure out the potential impact of Giving Tuesday. They are also mulling how to work with charities to increase giving rates.
Mr. Timms and Libby Leffler, head of partnerships at Facebook, said they were impressed when charities persuaded local broadcasters to cover Giving Tuesday events or asked their constituents to take pictures of themselves and share them on social media with the tag “unselfie.”
But Mr. Timms said organizations will need to be more creative about attracting attention through social media in the third year of the event, and he urged them not to “treat the Internet as a cash register.”
