How consumers plan to give back this holiday season and beyond — and how companies can help facilitate that giving

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The beginning of the holiday season heralds the arrival of Giving Tuesday, Salvation Army bell ringers, and the pilgrimage of people to their local soup kitchens to volunteer. Though this past year has been an anomaly due to COVID, Suzy has found that people are just as open to charitable giving this year as any other year — but where and how people decide to give back has shifted.

In our webinar, “Tis the Season to Donate: Consumer and Corporate Sentiments Around Giving Season,” we explore these changing habits. Anthony Onesto, Chief People Officer at Suzy was joined by Amy YaWen Chiu, our Director of Market Research, and Joel Pollick, the Founder & CEO of Percent Pledge, a platform dedicated to helping workplaces provide employees with meaningful opportunities to give back.

Here are three big takeaways from the webinar, covering everything from how people are planning to allocate their time and donations to how businesses can help foster a sense of charity year-round: 

The spirit of giving follows some seasonal trends...

The vast majority of respondents to Suzy’s most recent holiday giving survey plan to donate this year, with about half planning to give the same amount as they did last year and a third planning to give even more than that. Just over one in three (37%) also plan to volunteer this year.

But there’s a lot of seasonality around which charities people gravitate to. At Percent Pledge, Pollick says that organizations dedicated to education, the environment, and animal welfare are common during the year, but during the holidays volunteerism tends to be “heavily geared towards hunger and homelessness.” 

“It’s natural, right, thinking about Thanksgiving kicking off the holiday season, and then Giving Tuesday soon after. You come to realize ‘oh, we have so much at our table,’ and it makes you understand that so many people don’t,” said Pollick.

That’s similar to what Suzy’s survey found: Over 40% of people were interested in giving to food-related charities, the top response. Children- and family-related charities were close, at 38%, followed by homeless services at 30%.

...but this last year has flipped those trends on their head.

According to Pollick, hunger and homelessness weren’t top of mind for 2020’s holiday giving season. “Last year, COVID relief as well as racial equity were probably at the top of that list. And for good reason, given the global pandemic and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter Movement.”  

But it’s made a huge comeback. “This year, hunger and homelessness — even before the holiday season — had really jumped to the top of the list,” said Pollick. “Our working hypothesis is that this is an after effect of the pandemic. There are still so many people without a job, so many people that have been forced into poverty as a result of the pandemic. And so now the focus is less so on ‘how do we attack COVID and support doctors and frontline workers,’ and more so this empathy and understanding of the lingering effects that it's had on people.”

COVID has also changed how volunteering occurs. It might mean, for example, “helping to do deliveries to immunocompromised communities because they're not able to do their normal holiday shopping the same way they might be,” said Pollick. 

There are even opportunities for remote volunteering sessions. It’s just a matter of thinking outside the box to find skills-based opportunities, according to Pollick. For example, companies can partner with digitally-native nonprofits that employees can lend their virtual skills to.

People’s charitable spirit lasts long after the holidays are over—and businesses should tap in to those urges

44% of respondents to Suzy’s survey actually make regular charitable donations year-round. But oftentimes, businesses don’t have sufficient frameworks in place to help facilitate this giving. “Less than half of consumers’ jobs currently offer charitable giving benefits, and the donation options offered through their employer are limited,” said Chui. 

And over the past two years, donation and volunteer programs have become less of a nice-to-have and more of a need-to-have among employees, making it even more imperative for businesses to put these programs in place. “You're looking at social impact as a way to attract and retain talent,” said Onesto.

The biggest advice Pollick has for businesses looking to make giving back a part of their business? Focus on transparency and impact. “You want to make sure you can measure it, because then you're able to tell that story back to all of your stakeholders,” said Pollick. “And you should. Companies that are doing these programs, they should market them— because they're making a positive impact in their community, and it should also make a positive impact on their business.”