$6.5M Raised on Classy for Nonprofits on #GivingTuesday

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#GivingTuesday continued its annual growth trend in 2016, growing in every aspect of the campaign from overall donation volume to number of unique donors. #GivingTuesday has been celebrated on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States since 2012, intentionally following popular holidays such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Developed by the team at Belfar Center for Innovation and Social Impact at 92nd Street Y, #GivingTuesday was designed with a single purpose: to celebrate and encourage giving.

Classy, the world’s leading online fundraising platform for social enterprises, is proud to participate in this global event for the third year in a row by waiving its platform fees for the entire day of #GivingTuesday. In 2014, Classy’s first year of participating in #GivingTuesday, the platform gave back $15K to its customers raising money on the platform. In 2015, Classy expanded its #GivingTuesday support to include a dedicated microsite offering educational materials to assist nonprofits in designing and launching #GivingTuesday campaigns. As a result, Classy customers raised five times the amount from 2014, and Classy was able to give back $56K to its nonprofit customers.

This year, Classy’s #GivingTuesday support extended beyond the annual microsite to also include “how-to” content and ready-to-go email templates for nonprofits to use in their #GivingTuesday campaigns. Over 1,200 organizations downloaded content from Classy’s #GivingTuesday microsite leading up to the day of giving, and more than 1,200 customers had an active campaign running on #GivingTuesday. The day’s success is summarized by other notable stats, including:

• Classy gave back nearly $100K in waived fees to customers, a 69% increase over 2015
• Over 64,700 donations were processed on Classy, from over 60,000 donors from 84 countries
• The average gift size was $100 and 32% of donations were made from mobile devices
• Monthly giving remained strong on #GivingTuesday with 1,999 recurring gifts processed on Classy

“We’re so proud of the thousands of nonprofit organizations on the platform that grew this #GivingTuesday,” said Scot Chisholm, CEO and co-founder of Classy. “We know many organizations doubled, even tripled, their impact on #GivingTuesday this year, which speaks volumes about their efforts and the progress they drive towards every day.”

Organizations who launched top #GivingTuesday fundraising campaigns on Classy included:

• Camp Kesem, who raised money to fund new chapters to help bring hundreds of children whose parents are affected by cancer to the organization’s camp experience
• The Trevor Project, who set out to raise funds to cover 50,000 minutes of support or more for crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24
• Northwestern University Dance Marathon, whose campaign focused on raising money for GiGi’s Playhouse, a nonprofit organization that provides free therapeutic programming and support to individuals with Down syndrome
• Mercy For Animals, who launched a unique campaign leveraging a triple match donation to fund an undercover investigation that exposes the abuse of farmed animals worldwide
• buildOn, who also leveraged a matching gift to support their ongoing work to elevate expectations for urban youth and empower them to change the world

Classy is proud to work alongside over 2,500 nonprofits, some of whom contributed to making #GivingTuesday 2016 Classy’s biggest single day of donation volume in the platform’s history. To date, Classy has waived over $166K in fees to customers on #GivingTuesday.

To learn more, visit: www.classy.org

About Classy

Classy is the world’s leading fundraising platform for social enterprises that aim to solve social problems more effectively and efficiently. Since launching in 2011, Classy has helped more than 2,500 social enterprises including Oxfam, World Food Program USA, and National Geographic to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Classy also hosts the Collaborative + Classy Awards to recognize excellence in the social sector. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy employs a staff of over 200 people and was recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the world’s 10 Most Innovative Companies for Social Good. Classy was also recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the 10 Most Brilliant Companies for Social Impact and listed as a “Rising Star” in the first ever Forbes Cloud 100 list. Classy is backed by investors including JMI, Mithril, and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.classy.org or follow Classy on Twitter: @Classy.