December 12th is most popular day for festive giving, says Enthuse
Howard Lake | 1 December 2025 | News
The latest report on Christmas Giving insights from Enthuse includes highlighting which days are the most common for charitable giving in the month. And giving seems to be happening earlier.
Online giving to charities has changed to the first half of the month over the past two years, in contrast to the two years before that in which top donation days came only from the second half of the month.
The latest edition of the Christmas Giving Insights report reveals that in 2024 12th December saw the most number of gifts in a day, accounting for 5.5% of the month’s total giving via Enthuse.com. The daily average for the month was 3.2%.
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The report examines festive fundraising trends, including the best weeks, days and hours for donations, to help inform charities’ understanding of Christmas campaigns and donors’ preferences.
Giving days
In the last two years the most popular days for giving (the greatest volume of gifts) were:
- 2024: December 12th
- 2023: December 1st
Other top performing days in terms of donation volume in 2024 were all in the first half of the month:
- December 3rd (5.5%)
- December 13th (4.6%)
- December 11th (4.5%)
- December 10th (4.3%).
In similar fashion the highest day for donation value in 2024 was December 3rd.
In terms of days of the week for giving, Tuesday was the most popular (3.8%).
Thursday was close behind for the second year running as next most popular day of the week at 3.7%.
Monday and Friday were next at 3.6% and Wednesday least at 3.5%.
These gaps are very small. Indeed the gap between the best and worst performing weekdays is the smallest it has been since this research series began. In 2020 the gap had been a full one per cent, three times as much as last year’s.
Avoid the weekends
When it comes to scheduling festive campaign activity, any weekday has the potential to be successful for charities, according to Enthuse. But they recommend that charities avoid weekends. The average donation split drops to 2.6% for Sunday and 2.5% for Saturday “when people’s attention is elsewhere”.
Weak weeks?
The second week of December was when donation volume peaked for Enthuse clients in 2024. The days in Week 2 averaged 4% of the month’s donations.
The next most popular were:
- Week 1 (3.8%)
- Week 3 (3.5%)
- Week 5 (2.7%)
- Week 4 (2.3%).
Week 4 normally yields more, but it is susceptible to when Christmas Day falls during the week, with some days more likely to lead to workers logging offer early.
Charities should not give up completely on the third and fourth weeks of December. While donation volume drops the average value tends to be higher.
Cometh the hour
Enthuse can’t give a specific hour for the perfect time to elicit the most donations. But they can offer a three-hour period – 10am to 1pm – as the ideal time.
In December 2024 this window yielded, on average, the following:
- 10am secured 7.6% of the day’s donations in December
- 11am 7.5%
- 12pm 7.2%
- 1pm 6.9%
Not that later in the day doesn’t deliver. The window between 2pm and 5pm is still a fruitful time period for charities. Perhaps this is down to people having more flexibility around then they donate, after the morning’s deadlines?
The range here is between 6.4% and 6.8%.
Donations still held firm near these levels for the rest of the day, but from 9pm where it dropped to 5.4%.
If this pattern is repeated this year, Enthuse advises charities to consider avoiding scheduling appeals, social media posts and emails before 9am and after 9pm to avoid diminishing returns.
Chester Mojay-Sinclare, Enthuse Founder and CEO, commented on the report’s findings, saying:
“The idea that festive giving doesn’t kick in until the week of Christmas is outdated – it’s starting much earlier! Charities should expect donations from the start of December, as we know the volume of donations is highest in those first two weeks. And good causes should consider the immediate run up to Christmas as the perfect time to engage with their high value donors, as this is when the most generous donations tend to come in. ”
“As ever, timing is crucial for Christmas campaigns and targeting the right days of the week and hours of the day could help charities maximise their fundraising at this important part of the year. ”
The 18-page insight report can be downloaded in return for registering your contact details with Enthuse. It concludes with a case study of Treetops Hospice’s Christmas Treecycling campaign.
- Enthuse partners with Donorfy on CRM integration (20 July 2023)
- Midweek in December and final fortnight are best times for Christmas giving, Enthuse finds (3 November 2022)
- 1 December the best day for festive donations in 2023 (21 November 2023)
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.