Giving Tuesday founder: 'Donors expect to be philanthropists on their own terms'

“One of the driving ideas behind Giving Tuesday was to create a movement that shifts donors to owners,” says Henry Timms, chief executive of New York based charity 92Y and founder of the global day of giving.

“You only have to look at the ice bucket challenge to see that people want to have more agency and ownership when engaging with organisations they care about.

“We have been thinking a lot about how people want to engage differently with all aspects life and particularly charity,” says Timms.

Giving Tuesday, which launched in the US in 2012 and the UK in 2014, is designed as the not-for-profit answer to Black Friday or Cyber Monday – the two biggest shopping days of the year. It runs, annually, on the following Tuesday and on the day the public are encouraged to give to charity – through donations or by volunteering.

As with any fundraising campaign these days, social media plays a huge part in spreading the word. The hashtag #GivingTuesday is used by organisations to promote their cause and those who have donated or volunteered can tell their networks how they have contributed.

Last year in the UK, donations increased by 270% compared to the same day in 2013, and he believes that the network effect has a lot to do with it.

“We are beginning to learn a lot more about the network effects of donations,” he says. “You responding to a chain letter and sending money in is one thing but publicly making a donation and telling your friends you’ve just done it is a much more significant act.”

Timms, who spent many years working the in the UK’s voluntary sector before moving to New York, says that the donor and charity relationship has changed – it has moved from old to new power.

“The old power frame would say this is how you participate. The new power relationship is about increasing the agency of individuals and communities.”

This relationship is about providing donors with the context and tools to give on their own terms.

Despite the campaigns global aspirations – countries that are currently signed up include Australia, Brazil, Canada and Germany – the campaign’s growth on a local level is what fascinates the charity leader.

“You see cities, towns and villages coming together to not tell a national Giving Tuesday story but a very local one. And it’s brought some interesting moments,” he says. “People take it and make it their own – they flip the hashtag and turn it into something new.”

Baltimore turned #GivingTuesday into #BMoreGivesMore, raised more than $5m in 2013.

The charity Dress for Success, which helps people back into work, created #GivingShoesday to ask the public to donate unwanted shows. Timms says: “Giving Shoesday is big – they had thousands donated globally last year.”

“Giving Tuesday created a context where you can believe in the creativity of the charity sector,” says Timms. “That is what was a surprise for me – but it provides this opportunity to champion the entrepreneurialism of the charity sector.”

For Timms, those people with the big ideas who want to try new things should be applauded as it is their ability to experiment that will sustain organisations for the generations ahead.

Taking risks and trying new things are the biggest issues the charity sector has to face, according to Timms. “It can be easy, as a sector with so few resources and so many demands, to be conservative and steady as she goes. But, in a time when the world is changing so much, we have to change as a sector too.

“Giving Tuesday plays a small part in this – but the bigger issue is how we encourage ourselves to take risks and try new things.”

To encourage giving globally, Timms believes that the donating process needs to be easier and philanthropy, often thought to be just for the rich, more accessible.

“There’s an identified giving gap,” he says. “For instance, Brazil has a very strong philanthropic culture among the wealthiest people in society and they have local church volunteering and giving – but otherwise there is not a philanthropic culture in the country.”

This year the Brazilian branch of Giving Tuesday hope to use it to kickstart a philanthropic tradition in the middle of society. Participating on #GivingTuesday is “an act of agency and participation,” he says. “It’s a sign to your peer group of what you stand for – all of those things are increasing important to people.

Timms believes that there’s a generation of people who’ve grown up with an “inalienable right to participate”.

“They expect to be philanthropists on their own terms – and we as institutions need to help them do that. We need to provide them with the context to allow them to engage on their terms.”

For example, the power to donate money through social media. “Right now I can’t give money via Twitter or Facebook,” he says. “You have this huge secular church and no collection plate.”

Organisations need to make it easier for donors to engage, participate and become “owners” of their cause, according to Timms.

“We, as charities, need to think of ourselves as more of movement builders and less as institutions.

“We’ll reach a stage where so much of our job is not simply to build a product – such as an end-of-year letter or fundraising event – but to actually drive a movement of people.”