This isn’t the first time we’ve covered “Giving Tuesday”, a day dedicated to charitable causes taking place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year, this philanthropy movement inspired a bid for crypto donations of $1 million to Venezuelans, who have been suffering under economic and political turmoil.
This year, it’s taking place December 3rd, and charities and non-profits are betting on a sideways take of the initiative launched in 2012. They’re leaning into the cryptocurrency sphere, inspired by actions such as the Pineapple Fund, a story that became known when a pseudonymous bitcoiner donated around $55 million in bitcoin to charities during the 207 bull market.
GivingTuesday provides the ideal momentum for such donations since it has been cultivating an impressive reputation over the years. Just last year, they raised $400 million in the U.S., after receiving attention from Mashable, Microsoft and Facebook.
#BitcoinTuesday, calling at HODLers, companies and non-profits
As crypto-based donations are increasing, #BitcoinTuesday has emerged as this year’s rendition of a crypto #GivingTuesday. It’s being spearheaded by The Giving Block, a for-profit firm founded in 2018. Because few non-profits knew how to accept crypto donations, or hadn’t thought about this new pool of donors, their goal was to create a non-profit specific solution for accepting cryptocurrency donations.
For #BitcoinTuesday, they’re calling upon companies, HODLers and non-profits to participate. They’ve rounded up support from Brave Browser, Gemini and many others to create a concerted action in aid of non-profits such as Save the Children, Rainforest Foundation U.S., Lupus Foundation of America and No Kid Hungry.
The Washington D.C-based startup is leaning on crypto’s favorable tax status since donors don’t need to pay capital gains on stock donations. This became clear after newly minted millionaires in 2017 were faced with a big tax incentive to donate bitcoin.
Save the Children was founded in 1919 and has been accepting crypto donations since 2013. Ettore Rossetti, global digital lead of Save the Children, spoke to Coindek:
“In times of crisis, to reach those lofty ambitions, we need to be friendly not only to traditional financing mechanisms but to the crypto community who’s been very innovative.”
“We feel like children will win if we can unlock new forms of funding,” he added.
Other ways to make crypto donations
BitGive is seen as the first bitcoin and blockchain non-profit charity. They created the GiveTrack project, which proposes real-time tracking of funds as a way of revolutionizing philanthropy. Blockchain technology enables donors to trace the transactions live on a platform, to verify the funds have reached the final destination and see how they are being spent.
CryptoGivingTuesday is a community derived from the GivingTuesday organization. Donations can be made to NGOs and non-profits in multiple cryptos, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and Dash. They currently have 50 charities signed up, and they host crypto donation platforms such as GiveTrack and Binance Charity Foundation.
This is an example of how communities adopt GivingTuesday’s branding to promote their own campaign.
“Some of these big payment processor platforms like Facebook and PayPal use GivingTuesday as a great way for them to engage [with their audience]. So we’ll give people the best practices. We want to hear how their campaigns went, learn about their results and bring them into that network,” – said Woodrow Rosenbaum, GivingTuesday’s Data & Insights Lead.
Be it GivingTuesday, Bitcoin Tuesday, or other names, the spirit that will be mark December 3, 2019, is the same.