Fundraising trends to pay attention to in December

December is always an interesting month in the world of fundraising. Charities launch dedicated Christmas appeals, teams take part in festive fundraising events as the year closes, and organisations broadly try to make the most of the public’s seasonal generosity. 

One of the big advantages of fundraising during this part of the year is that there is a lot of information that charities can learn from the previous year and apply these lessons to their fundraising as December rolls around once more.  

Handily, fundraising, donations, and events registration platform Enthuse has collated these lessons in its most recent Christmas Insights report. The report revealed that Christmas Eve was the best day for donations in December 2021 for the third year running.

More than 5% of donations made in December came through on December 24, rising 1.1 percentage points from 2020. However, this percentage remains lower than in 2019, when 7% of donations came through on Christmas Eve. 

The report also found that weekdays in December are “significantly” more popular for donations than weekends. This is true all year round, according to Enthuse, but particularly notable in an important donation month like December.  

In 2021, donations peaked on Fridays (3.8% of donations coming in on this day), doubling the percentage received on Saturdays during the Christmas period. As Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday in 2022, donations may peak on 23 December instead. 

Prioritise your spending 

Two weeks towards the end of December were generally the most fruitful times for donations, Enthuse found. Weeks three and four received 3.7 and 3.8% of donations respectively, while the second week of the month dipped slightly from the donations received in week one.  

Due to the success of weeks three and four, Enthuse suggests that charities should use the first fortnight of December to build awareness on social media, so that when people are ready to donate later in the month, they are at the front of their minds.  

However, week five of the Christmas period sees donation amounts halve from week four, with a drop to 1.9% from 3.8%. Charities should therefore prioritise their festive campaigns earlier in December and reassess the budget behind them in the last week of the month. 

The report also offered interesting findings around Giving Tuesday, the donation day that follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The report found that Giving Tuesday is still an area of growth for charities in the UK, with it making up 3.9% of the Christmas giving period donations in 2021. This is a drop from 4.2% in 2020.  

Giving Tuesday remained the second best day for donations in week one of the Christmas period but considering “it fell on the last day of [November] in 2021, and this would have been pay day for many, it’s perhaps surprising to not see a stronger performance,” concluded the report.