How does Giving Tuesday work? Individual giving on Tuesday (to the charity of your choice or in the manner you choose) is amplified in the aggregate by the volume of people acting for good on a single day. The result? A worldwide burst of goodwill. Join the movement. Give any way you can to anyone or anything in need. Pay it forward in your drive-through coffee line or donate big bucks to charity. Charities rely on crucial year end giving to fund year round services. Arrange for a giving tree in your lobby at work or host a charitable fundraiser at home! Smile more than usual or invite a friend to dinner. Revive your random acts of kindness or come through on a promise you've been meaning to honor for a long time. Give of yourself. Tuesday Dec 1 is the day to act.
Those readers with natural generosity will gravitate to Giving Tuesday but others will need some motivation. Science has some advice....giving is good for your health. That's right, Notre Dame sociologists have just published findings from the Science of Generosity Initiative that show better health outcomes and lower levels of depression in people who consistently give. "We’re trying to understand where generosity comes from, but also what the consequences of generosity are," co-researcher and co-author of The Paradox of Generosity, Christian Smith, explained to the New Republic. Smith and co-author Hilary Davidson argue that the practice of generosity influences neurochemistry by triggering pleasure centers. To experience lasting neurochemical change though, generosity, Smith says, "...has to be a practice, it has to be something that is sustained over time, that people engage with regularly. One-off things just don’t affect us that much, whereas things that we repeat, things that are sustained in our bodily behaviors and in our minds, have tremendous effects on us." So, don't stop on Giving Tuesday. Let Tuesday and the holiday season be the start of an ongoing practice of generosity.
As Dickens' novel, A Christmas Carol illustrates, December heralds an opportunity for all of us to re-evaluate our orientation to generosity. Giving Tuesday is just the first day of many in December that present the opportunity to connect with the spirit of the season by giving of our time, touching another life, or contributing to making the world a better place. May you be inspired and transformed, Dear Reader, by the magic of the season.
Update December 2015. A not so enthusiastic article from NPR. In it they quote Brady Jacobsen of a company called Shift who "wishes wishes that #GivingTuesday didn't have to be in December, when 31 percent of all charitable giving happens because of the holiday season and the end-of-year tax incentive."
