The GivingTuesday Data Commons provides to the social sector what the commercial sector has long benefitted from: big data to drive better decision-making, build a more resilient social sector, and accelerate equitable social innovation.
Data Commons works with partners across sectors and borders to:
With hundreds of collaborators and 50 global data labs, the Data Commons has collected the most comprehensive datasets in the social sector and is the only initiative focused on collecting and analyzing individual giving behavior of all types.
GivingPulse is a weekly survey designed to investigate a broad range of giving behaviors and sentiments that can help us gather insights to grow more generosity.
Read the Special Report
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) is a collaboration among fundraising data providers, researchers, analysts, associations, and consultants to empower the sector to track and evaluate trends in giving. Analyzed quarterly by the GivingTuesday Data Commons, this project offers one of the only views of the current year’s fundraising data in aggregate to provide the most recent trends for guiding nonprofit fundraising and donor engagement.
Read the Q2 2024 Report
Our holistic view of global giving in 2023 reflects research and analysis derived from current Data Commons initiatives and partnerships, cross-referenced against findings by other leading sector analysts. We go beyond familiar philanthropic metrics, often narrowly focused on financial donations to charities, to also report on giving money, time, items and voice in many different contexts, including giving to community groups and non-family individuals.
Read the Lookback Report
The GivingTuesday Resource Exchange is a global, collaborative, comprehensive, and continuously updated library of resources on generosity and philanthropy. The Resource Exchange empowers social sector leaders and researchers to learn from and be inspired by research, insights, stories, and resources from peers in the sector. It’s your go-to spot for staying informed about and inspired by generosity in all its forms!
Access the Resource Exchange
GivingTuesday’s Data Commons Working Groups create a shared approach to research and an opportunity for giving platforms, researchers, academics, data scientists, and practitioners to collaborate on the following research themes:
Crowdfunding + Online GivingThis Working Group focuses on online giving, fundraiser and donor behavior, product innovations, customer and partner insights, and specific data science methodologies to uncover key motivators for how and why people contribute to crowdfunding campaigns and to uncover trends in online giving.
Workplace GivingSupported by Schwab Charitable, the Workplace Giving Working Group brings together leaders from a wide range of organizations seeking to bring more generosity into the workplace. Members of this group convene to identify methods for amplifying the effect of workplace giving campaigns, providing more agency to employees in the giving process, and ultimately creating better outcomes for beneficiaries, employees, and employers alike.
Impact MeasurementThis working group was formed to discuss one of the most fundamental questions of the nonprofit and philanthropy sector: how can we re-examine the role of impact measurement to ensure it serves beneficiaries and enables service providers to work more effectively? The group looks at impact measurement challenges from all angles, including capacity issues, equity, disconnects between funders and service providers, and incentives to compete rather than cooperate.
Crisis + GenerosityThis working group explores how generosity can be mobilized during times of crisis and how responses from civil society can be resourceful and creative. Specifically, the group is interested in how to rapidly identify needs on the ground and the networks and players best equipped to respond at the outset of a crisis, the kind of data infrastructure needed to understand these networks, and how predictive technology can produce the data needed to get ahead of crises.
Generosity AIThe Generosity AI Working Group is a cross-sector collaboration between practitioners in tech, academics, and the social sector who are exploring ways that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to advance missions and grow generosity at scale. This working group will explore the role of knowledge-sharing platforms, learning networks, and communities of practice in accelerating AI adoption for social good. It will also identify strategies to address issues related to resource constraints, governance, data sharing, and equity in collaborative AI projects. Sign up to participate in this working group here.
For more information or to join a working group, please contact Kelsey Kramer.
The GivingTuesday Data Commons investigates the nature of generosity globally using quantitative and qualitative methods. Our mission is to generate insights and new knowledge that can help create a more effective and evidence-driven social sector, capable of meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
With partners from across the sector, we help address the urgent need for data-based insights to support social sector organizations around the world. We also work to convene partners to address new issues and trends as they emerge and become relevant to the sector’s practices.
Within the GivingTuesday Data Commons and with the engagement of the GivingTuesday movement, we leverage our data, findings, collaborative research, and networks to create communities of learning and practice. These communities allow researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to work together to identify opportunities and test hypotheses to better understand the generosity ecosystem worldwide.
Strengthen fundraising practices and supporter engagement by measuring, describing, and facilitating the application of successful practices through studies of fundraising data, donor trends, and other relevant datasets, as well as what we can learn from experimentation with new technologies that are impacting the sector.
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Understand, articulate, and investigate the full spectrum of generosity by studying the intersectionalities of the generosity ecosystem beyond the scope of monetary donations. This includes studying the drivers and influencers of giving as well as understanding and classifying the generosity ecosystem.
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Characterize and model the GivingTuesday distributed movement by deriving insights from the accomplishments and learnings of its network of leaders. Here we explore the broader application of GivingTuesday’s insights on peer-learning communities and proximate leadership practices to inform new ways of working towards change.
