December giving insights revealed as Christmas planning gets underway
Melanie May | 11 July 2023 | News
With Christmas campaign planning underway, Enthuse has released its Christmas Giving Insights Report.
Based on four years of its December donations data, the report shows that December 21st was the best day for festive giving in terms of volume of donations in 2022, knocking Christmas Eve off the top spot. Donations on the 21st accounted for nearly 5% of the month’s total donation volume – above the 3.2% daily average for December.
However, the share of donations for the best performing day in 2022 (4.9%) is down from 2021 where Christmas Eve accounted for 5.5% of the month’s total. According to Enthuse, donation numbers have been spread more evenly across the month post-Covid, with 2019’s best performing day having 7% of the month’s donations.
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The second busiest day for donations in 2022 was December 6th (4.6% of the month’s total volume) with December 22nd (4.4%) coming in third. December 1st and 12th shared fourth spot at 4.3%. Enthuse suggests that this makes December 1st the best day in the opening week for starting a Christmas campaign.
Christmas Eve saw 4% of donations for the month given on this date. Enthuse says this could be because Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday in 2022 and weekends are less popular for giving than weekdays. This year Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday.
While December 21st was the best day for volume of donations, Enthuse’s data shows that December 20th was the highest donation revenue day in 2022.
Best weekdays & weeks
In 2022, Wednesday was the best day for December donations in terms of volume, just above Thursday. Friday fell to third place after being the best day in December 2021. According to Enthuse, the middle of the week has always performed well for donations but this is the first time it has come out on top since this strand of its research began.
As in 2019, 2020 and 2021, Enthuse found Saturday and Sunday to be the quietest days for donations.
In terms of the best weeks for donations, while in 2021 weeks three and four came top, in 2022 week four was the best week while week three dropped to the bottom.
Best time of day
10am – 12pm seems to be the golden slot for donations based on the 2022 data. 10am – 11am saw an average of 7.25% of the day’s donations falling then – just ahead of 11am – 12pm at 7.24%.
12pm – 2pm still performed well according to Enthuse, taking between 6.4% and 6.8% of daily donations, and the data also shows a second spike from 5pm – 8pm. Again, this range averages between 6.4% and 6.8%.
Commenting on the data, Chester Mojay-Sinclare, Enthuse Founder and CEO, said:
“Looking at the data over the past four years, it’s clear we’ve settled into a post-Covid giving pattern, where donations are spread more evenly across December. That’s not to say we don’t see a change year on year, with December 21st leapfrogging Christmas Eve to become the most popular day for donations.
“We have a good idea of the best hours, days and weeks for charities to target for Christmas campaigns. The challenge for good causes at Christmas this year will, once again, be the cost of living crisis and how to maximise digital fundraising by using campaign budget wisely. The charities that perform best will be the ones that cut through the noise and find ways to resonate with people during this challenging economic period.”
Giving Tuesday
Enthuse also looked at Giving Tuesday. Its data shows that last year in the UK, 3.5% of the festive season’s donations taking place on the day. This was a drop from 3.9% in 2021 and 4.2% in 2020.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.