Days of Giving: Are Our Good Intentions Getting in the Way?
Last week marked the conclusion of the NH Gives event here in Brightspot’s home state. Hosted by the NH Center for Nonprofits, NH Gives is the state's largest day-of-giving devoted to raising as much money and awareness as possible for the causes served by NH's nonprofit sector. This year, the event funneled a remarkable $3.5M to 575 New Hampshire organizations. The event has grown year-over-year and is one many organizations look forward to or rely on; while others find it to be a big lift, with little financial impact (a few hundred dollars, perhaps). Nevertheless, the buzz has become so pronounced that organizations have developed a fear of missing out (or FOMO, as the kids say)! Days of giving like NH Gives or Giving Tuesday are certainly well-intentioned and again, meaningful for many organizations but are these days of giving really what our collective sector needs? Below we pose questions to help us all think about if, and how days of giving could look a little different to serve our sector better.
Is competition what our sector needs? Days of giving, and those in particular where organizations enter one virtual arena, perpetuate a competitive mentality amongst organizations. If you’ve followed Brightspot, you know we’re big proponents of Vu Le’s work. In a 2019 blog, Le wrote, “We need to stop the Nonprofit Hunger Games and do a better job not just working on our individual organization’s survival, but on the effectiveness of our field as a whole. Our missions are interrelated, so it is silly to constantly be in cutthroat competition with one another.” Justin Strasburger, the Executive Director at Full Plates Full Potential in Maine (an organization we had the pleasure to work with) referenced Le in a blog he wrote about Giving Tuesday in 2021 on Medium. Strasburger wrote, “We in the non-profit sector feel compelled to participate in this ‘non-profit hunger games,’ competing for your eyeballs and your dollars with pithy elevator pitches and commitments of matching dollars (don’t get me started on the B.S. that is Facebook’s matching commitment today…). But these pitches almost always oversimplify the complexity of the issues we’re dealing with. We don’t get into the need for collaboration because it feels risky to highlight other organizations that might lead to you, the donor, taking your giving there instead.” We tend to agree with Vu and Justin and believe that there have to be ways for organizations to better engage donors in the complexity and interconnection of the sector.
What is the tax of participation? Successful outcomes on days of giving don’t just happen. In fact, these days of giving have evolved to require that staff and board members put together videos and orchestrate dynamic email and social media campaigns that will “stand out” among the noise of the day. Many organizations rely on their board members to reach out to their networks to help meet the donor quota to be eligible for that extra $250 gift. Time, energy and dollars are required to be successful. Ultimately, this means organizations have to pull these resources away from something else; and sometimes that something else might be more strategic, sustained fundraising efforts or even the very programs that our community desperately needs.
Within our communities, are we sending the wrong message about giving? We need our communities to understand that our nonprofits are reliant on support—and by support, we mean financial, AND volunteer AND in-kind–ALL YEAR LONG. Glorifying a day (or two) a year for giving, overshadows the ongoing needs of organizations that are working tirelessly in our communities and distills it to a hyper-transactional engagement where folks are logged in ‘ready to hit send’ in order to get a matching bonus, thereby obscuring the essential “why” behind the gift.
What are we not paying attention to? Right now, we are facing significant crises at the national and global levels. On days of giving, we are somewhat subconsciously being asked to divert our attention and support away from tragedies like the recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the devastating war in Ukraine, and the impending overturn of Roe v. Wade. As mentioned above, the focus on simple, one-time gifts also misses a chance to educate and engage donors in the complex but interesting and compelling systems at work! No one organization can do it all alone - what would it look like if organizations paired up and raised money together instead?
If we had one ask of the people in power organizing these days, is this the “what” that we would ask for? There is no denying that organizations need money but we also hear within our Brightspot community that they need board members, they need systemic change, they need policy change. Ultimately, organizations cannot enact these changes alone–and we would argue–need the people and groups that have the most advocacy power (or greatest mouthpieces) to help cut the red tape that makes the work of nonprofits unnecessarily challenging.
We know that the questions we are asking are tough and we also know the conversation required to arrive at answers will be even tougher. But together, this is a conversation that can only make our sector stronger.