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Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
Going Big with Asha Curran: Building GivingTuesday into a Shared Culture of Generosity
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- [00:02]
Asha Curran
People are so allergic to inauthenticity these days. Right. And if communication feels very corporate, Right. Very slick, it actually doesn't do the job that you want it to do. If you're telling a story about why your mission is so important and you're linking arms with others as you do that, people respond much better. But also as a growth project for you and for your organization, it's just transformative because you're getting yourself out of that space where you think, I run this sort of organization. There are six other organizations like that in my community. But we're in competition with each other, right? Instead, no, you're not right. You're all driving toward the same thing. You're all driving toward addressing the same problem. And you will do a much better job at it if you face that problem together. Even if, yes, sometimes somebody makes more money and sometimes somebody makes less. So thinking about that kind of thing really happens well in advance.
- [01:03]
Kevin Gentry
Welcome to the Going Big Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week, I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube or anywhere else, YouTube, tune into podcasts. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.
- [01:46]
Well, welcome back to another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and today's guest helped launch one of the greatest movements ever in terms of generosity. I'm talking about Giving Tuesday. Our guest, Asha Curran, is the CEO of Giving Tuesday. As you may know, that movement in terms of giving has totally transformed philanthropy. Now it has inspired giving from more than 110 countries around the world. It has unlocked now over 22 and a half billion dollars in giving. It has created a movement around giving, but it's also demonstrated that philanthropy is not just about giving from the wealthy. It is actually an empowerment effort to engage just millions and millions of people. This is such an exciting topic for anyone listening that is involved in any element of philanthropy on either side of the equation, the nonprofit sphere. You know what GivingTuesday is all about. But there's so much more in terms of how this came into reality. This experiment turned into a movement. The Risks that Asha and others took. So a lot to talk about. Asha Curran, it's a great privilege to have you as our guest today.
- [03:07]
Asha Curran
Thank you so much, Kevin. So nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [03:09]
Kevin Gentry
Well, well, this is going to be a lot of fun. And this is so in line with the going big theme. But just to kick it off, help us, those who might not know, I think everybody in the world probably knows. But still, what exactly is Giving Tuesday and how did it turn from an idea into reality?
- [03:30]
Asha Curran
Sure. Giving Tuesday is both an organization and a movement. It's a movement for generosity that is present all over the world. And it began as a pretty simple idea, as a way to think about how we think about community, how we think about philanthropy, how we think about giving, and how we think about digital technologies in the 21st century. So GivingTuesday was created in 2012 at a very famous institution here in New York called the 92nd Street Y. Many people will know it, some people won't. But it's a very, very large, very prestigious community center. And my job was to think about, to think about all of those questions. How you use, how do you think about community in the 21st century, how you harness social media, which was of course back then very, very different. So it started as, it started as a hashtag and it has just evolved since then into a year round movement with thousands of local civic leaders inspiring more generosity in their own regions.
- [04:34]
Kevin Gentry
So it's the Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the United States, roughly that early time in generally early December, maybe late November. But that period, how did it turn from just an idea and some experiments to, to the point that you took it public and we want to know how did it turn into a movement? Sure.
- [04:56]
Asha Curran
And part of that was due to decisions that we made or that our sort of co creation crew made. And some of it was all about decisions that other people made, how much they took it on, how much responsibility they took in pushing it forward. So the idea, and it's funny that you mentioned that it was the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and after Black Friday and after Cyber Monday, because of course, those things are not very important in many parts of the world where Giving Tuesday now exists. So for those parts of the world, it's a random Tuesday in late November or early December. And you know, the great thing is it just doesn't seem to matter. It's the day that the world is giving back. And so it's the day that everybody does. It's the day that we celebrate together. So I would Say, in terms of the decisions that we made, that really helped to fuel the fire that became Giving Tuesday was that it was an idea that was really made to give away. It was made to be open source. It was made to be owned by others, whether that be a nonprofit organization, a civically minded individual in their communities, a corporation, a local business, a school. You know, the list goes on and on and on. Literally anybody can participate in Giving Tuesday as long as they are doing good with the day. So that sort of rethinking traditional marketing norms, like really caring a lot about where your logo goes and making sure that you get credit for something for an idea as it grows, we sort of said, like, let's not worry about any of that stuff, and actually quite intentionally went the opposite way. As you might think, when a new idea comes into the world and an institution is responsible for it, that institution naturally wants to make sure that it's responsible for this great idea. And we said, if we do that, then the idea won't grow in the way that we imagine the way that we envision. And I think that was right. I think the part that we didn't foresee is it really exploded that first year. It was really an immediate thing, but that was in the days that social media was there. People were concentrated on a few platforms. They were really robustly engaging with those platforms. It was easier for an idea like GivingTuesday to spread. And it did. And the great thing about it was that it spread, spread to just an enormous, enormous plurality of people, of kinds of people, people in different regions, people who speak different languages, people who worship different faiths. It really transcended all of those boundaries, which was just an incredible thing. And then after the first Giving Tuesday happened, we started getting calls, emails from around the world, people saying, I'd like to bring this idea to my own country. And certainly, you know, I will readily admit that is just not something that we for. And if we had foreseen it, I doubt we would have gone with the whole Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday framing. Although it was great because it really helped people understand what it was. Right? Anybody can, can see what that progression is. We eat a lot, we're thankful, we consume a lot, we consume a lot. And then there's a day to, to really think about giving back and expressing what we care about in this world and caring about our communities, about our friends, and. And also caring about complete strangers. So it was all of those civic leaders from all over the world who are absolutely responsible to this day for pushing this incredible mission forward. And for our part, those are people who are not, you know, on our payroll, but we don't think of them as volunteers in any way. They are owners of their piece of this movement. They have almost complete autonomy and agency in terms of what they do with the idea in their own spaces. And I only say almost because they are accountable to each other, each other. Right. They do good things, they share those ideas. And you have this sort of virtuous cycle that, that gets created where somebody does something that really works, whether that's a nonprofit campaign, whether it's working with a local municipality or a local government, et cetera, et cetera, and they share it, and then others are free to take it, to iterate on it to make it an even better success, and then feed that back into the network.
- [09:16]
Kevin Gentry
Well, I love that attitude. And I gotta confess, that is the primary reason I was so interested in having you on the Going Big podcast, because your attitudes about empowerment and agency not only have been proven through what you've done, but it's so counter to how people, I think in terms of just basic human nature, tend to think they, they want to kind of control or guide or, or, or put guardrails on. There's a lot here I want to unpack, but just even to take it back a little bit more to the source. And you, you, you made the reference, of course, to Thanksgiving in the United States. It's a pretty uniquely American holiday. Some other countries have the idea not necessarily then, but typically giving is greatest at the end of the calendar year. For some, it's tied to their religious faith, but others it's just, it's just sort of naturally there. But how did you come up, I mean, who said, hey, we've got Black Friday, we've got Cyber Monday, why don't we do Giving Tuesday? How did the idea come about?
- [10:22]
Asha Curran
Yes, the idea belonged to my then boss, Henry Timms, who later became CEO of the 92nd Street Y. And the first thing he did was definitely to say to me, oh, what do you think of this idea? But the next thing was really to build a community of people to co create this idea together. And the way that we did that is a little bit different from your typical nonprofit progression of an idea in that we looked outside of the building. So I think it's pretty typical in a large institution to run a new idea past lots and lots of different members of the staff and leadership and committees. And I think the problem with that is often that the original idea ends up kind of A mishmash, right. By the time it gets to the end, it's been fed into by so many people with so many different opinions and agendas. So I think that can often catch people out in an institutional setting. The way that we built that community outside of the building was really, really down and dirty. Really, like showing up at the door of a tech company, an academic institution, a nonprofit, and saying, like, almost literally with a bottle of wine in one hand and a cheese platter in the other and saying, will you, you know, host a meetup for us? Invite all your friends, we don't know, people from your, you know, sector, your part of the world. And then say, look, we're approaching this idea with complete humility. We don't really know what we're doing here. I mean, my job at the time was to think about how to harness social media for good. And that was a new experiment every day. Right. Nobody really knew what social media was doing or was capable of or, you know, could be responsible for over the longer term. So these. This was a group of people who were passionate about the idea, who gave us lots of good counsel and lots of good introductions. And now, honestly, I can't imagine giving birth to a new idea any other way. You know, it's. It's the greatest way to do things because first of all, we did manage to gather all the wisdom from all of those amazing people, but also because then they became ambassadors and champions for it, and they went off into their own corners of the world and their own walks of life, whatever. Whatever sector that might be. And they talked about it. Right? They spread the word.
- [12:47]
Kevin Gentry
Well, okay, so this just is really fascinating. And I. And I don't know if you agree. I think in the nonprofit sector, there actually is a lot of aversion to risk to begin with. There is also the proverbial, you know, design something by committee and you get something that's pretty. Pretty bleak. But you've. You've said, I believe that, you know, you didn't necessarily launch a movement or it's not a movement until it moves without you.
- [13:15]
Asha Curran
Right.
- [13:15]
Kevin Gentry
And I love that attitude. Just expand on that a little bit more because, again, I think I'm gonna. I'm gonna venture that for the audience that's listening to this, this is a tough thing to comprehend. Was this tough for you to comprehend? For you all to comprehend? Did it begin with the mindset from the start? Just. I mean, help us? It's amazing.
- [13:35]
Asha Curran
It didn't feel hard for me to comprehend at all. It felt like I mean a lot of that stuff at that point was really being guided by Henry, who later wrote a book called New Power that really expands on a lot of these ideas and this way of thinking versus a more old school way of thinking and how those two sort of types of power, new and old, can work together, can be polarized against each other, can be harnessed for useful things. So in the beginning it, it felt like the instinct was the way the things worked in the pre social media world are not the way they're working anymore. And that felt right. It didn't feel like I was doing anything sort of antithetical to my own values, only antithetical to the things I'd learned that were really important, like credit and branding and logos. But I didn't believe that stuff in my soul. It was just like the stuff that I'd been taught that we need to worry about. Right? Don't let anybody use your idea. Maybe somebody will, maybe you won't get the cred it for it, right? Maybe somebody will take it and do something evil or nefarious with it. That's the other question I get all the time. And the truth is that when you base a project on a sort of radical trust, right on the idea that people are going to take what they need from the idea and leave what they need and it becomes a sort of mutual aid project in and of itself and then you get validated over and over because the people who are drawn to your idea are genuinely people who want to, to do good things with it. I think that if there's a, you know, somebody who wants to do evil, boy, there's a lot of other places to go than Giving Tuesday. Right? So we, we really can sort of give this idea away, watch all these amazing things happen with it and then be validated in that decision making because none of the terrible things came to pass that might have been predicted by some at that point.
- [15:24]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Well, again, for those listening just to fully grasp this, the, the approach you all took was that anybody could this. You didn't have to have approvals, you didn't have to approve use of the language or the logo just to make that point again, may, maybe that makes sense, but I think for a lot we think there's sort of the franchise model and other things we think, you know, you can go do. But, but, but only within these guard rails did, I mean, was there any sense of have. Did. Did you feel like you had to push yourself to let go or again, I'm going to push a Little bit. Did you really begin with this mindset? Look, we're just gonna let it go and see what happens?
- [16:04]
Asha Curran
Yeah. I mean, keep in mind that it wasn't, this wasn't our first rodeo. So at the time, my job was to start projects like this. Right. They could be on different themes, but they were about how you take an idea and then use emerging technologies to push that idea away from you and to push civic agency into other people's hands. And the truth is, that is so rewarding, Kevin. Like when that happens, the payoff from that is so much more rewarding than if you simply license somebody to use your idea in a certain way that you prescribe and you describe and you decide that's just not as much fun. Right. The part of the fun of giving Tuesday to this day, 14 years later, is watching what people do with that freedom. I think that if we had different rules, first of all, we'd be much, much, much smaller. We simply never would have scale. And that's honestly, like, ultimately that's, that's really the final answer to that. Like, it worked. So something that we did must have been, must have been. Right, Right. Must have caught a sort of wave of change in the way that people were thinking, consuming, communicating, and certainly contributing. And you mentioned the, you know, this, the sort of nonprofit tendency of running things through a lot of committees and not being exceptionally risk tolerant. And that's true. And I think it's. There's a lot of things that go into that, go into that truth. And part of it is that non profits aren't incentivized to be risk tolerant. Right, right. They're in a none, if you would
- [17:37]
Kevin Gentry
though, because it's not, that's not naturally intuitive.
- [17:40]
Asha Curran
I mean, nonprofits exist on a non stop starvation cycle. They are entirely prey to the boom and bust of, of funding, the general mood of funders, what the markets might be doing. So all of these different sort of fluctuations in the world that affect the way people think about giving nonprofits money. But at the same time, the needs that that nonprofit is serving. Right. That any given nonprofit is serving don't go away at all. And in fact, right now they're just intensifying, right? Or during COVID they just intensified. And so if you are a nonprofit and you're right at the edge of your budget all the time, the, the last thing that you can think about doing is experimenting and testing and embracing failure. Those things all sound terrific, right? But in the day to day life of many, many nonprofits, they are all but Impossible. So I would really, really like to see that change. That's a big part of the conversation now. But I think that One thing that GivingTuesday did was to encourage whatever experimentation, whatever innovation, whatever collaboration was possible with the resources that nonprofits had. And I feel good about that. I feel proud not only of Giving Tuesday, but of those nonprofits. And over the years, you know, we've seen a common misconception about Giving Tuesday is that it's very big, you know, big multinational nonprofits with enormous marketing budgets that do the best on the day. It's not true at all. I mean, we find that small and nonprofit, small and medium nonprofits do very, very well. And part of the reason is that they are less oppressed by the bureaucracy. Right. Of those constant approvals and so forth. One of the earliest nonprofits I remember having their best day ever was an entirely volunteer run animal shelter. And it was in the, you know, it was in the very beginning. They did this amazing Instagram campaign of a group of volunteers taking a road trip to somewhere in the south, rescuing a truckload of dogs, giving them all Giving Tuesday related names and driving them back to be adopted, you know, here in. In New York. And. And it was called the badass Brooklyn Animal Rescue. I remember now. And so, like, you know, using the day to experiment and do something new is something that nonprofits have done since the very be. And even if that was all it accomplished, I think that would be worth it.
- [20:17]
Kevin Gentry
Oh, absolutely. This is a great point. As you may know, I have been in the nonprofit fundraising space for 40 years, and I really try to devote a lot of attention to training and coaching because so many of the ideas about fundraising are counterintuitive. But my experience has been that as good as the ideas sound and as much desire as there would be to experiment, as you say, we return to the office and we just drown in the urgency of the day and everything about the sort of survival cycle. And it's tough to step back. It is. And act in this strategic manner. Well, okay, I want to. I want to dive in a little bit more to the behavior of the donor and then the behavior of the nonprofit. Behavior may be too strong of a word, but, you know, the social psychologist Robert Cialdini has explained about these influences that drive a lot of decision making, like scarcity and liking and commitment and consistency. And one is this concept of social proof that maybe it's sort of, you know, fomo, that we follow the wisdom of the crowds or we don't want to also feel Left out. What are donors giving more because you think they're seeing others give? Because, you know, we also know that a donor can be inspired by a story, whatever, but they look to make sure is this, this organization credible? Is this cause that my contribution going to make a difference? Does the fact that so many are engaged in giving on Giving Tuesday, you think that helps encourage people to give more?
- [21:50]
Asha Curran
Absolutely, I think there's a few things. I think the fact that social proof plays a big, big role in this. People are inspired when they see others give, when they see others be generous. And I don't mean give money, I mean generous in any way. Right. There data showing that if someone sees a person paying for another person's coffee, a stranger in the morning, right. That they are likely to be like significantly happier and more generous themselves for the remainder of that day. That act of generosity didn't even have anything to do with that third person, keep in mind. So witnessing that behavior is so powerful. I think there's also a couple of other elements. One is that people feel that their values are being shared. And that's something we've been doing a lot of work with lately from our data commons. So we have a lot of efforts around data at Giving Tuesday. And what our data shows is that people will be so much more likely to act if they feel that their neighbors share their values. Now, I don't mean if they share their political beliefs, right? I don't mean if they share every, check every box on their ideology. I mean values like sharing and belonging and openness and kindness and generosity, then they're more likely to act. So we are so as, as social animals, we are so affected by what others around us are doing. I think there's also something about the celebratory nature of Giving Tuesday. So a lot of things that go viral and this has been true even as so much has changed with social media, this is still true that often things that go viral are deeply negative are things that the algorithm knows will, you know, create outrage and self righteousness and indignation in us, right. And will provoke us to react. And Giving Tuesday is not like that. You know, it's. We've shown that it shows the same kind of spike in giving as a natural disaster. But it's not a disaster, right? It's a happy day. And that doesn't mean that it's a day where we are Pollyannas, right, Where we don't think about all the things that are wrong. Of course we do. But we celebrate our ability to do Something about them. And I think that that attracts people. Right. People. People might respond algorithmically to outrage and indignation, but people don't actually enjoy feeling those things. They're not good, they're not healthy, they're not generative.
- [24:21]
Kevin Gentry
No. That has been a very pleasant revelation. From interviews in this Going Big podcast is a similar sentiment. And when you express these attitudes in a big, bold way, it's just. It's infectious and it's positive. I'm going to be interviewing Arthur Brooks soon, and I'm sure he's going to have a lot to share.
- [24:41]
Asha Curran
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the truth is people have those values anyway. But we need, as humans, frameworks and rituals and moments and nudges, right. That provoke actual behavior based on our values. And that is one reason that this is so valuable. It's one reason any holiday is valuable. It's one reason, you know, that there are certain days of the week that we worship. Right. Or certain days of the year that we, you know, pay particular attention to certain things. So we always say that Giving Tuesday is kind of like a wedding anniversary in that it's a day that you celebrate, right. Your relationship. That doesn't mean you ignore it every other day of the year. Right. Of course you pay attention to it, but this is the big moment to throw a party for it.
- [25:31]
Kevin Gentry
Well, there is something special about Thanksgiving, I think. And so for those listening in other countries who've adopted Giving Tuesday, you might want to adopt Thanksgiving as well. It's a great way to. To get in the right mindset. Well, so talk about nonprofits. My sense is that, I mean, they have become very effective ambassadors for you because they're the ones promoting Giving Tuesday. Did they. What is your take on how it has been sort of embraced? Is there an element of FOMO of, gee, I better, I better promote Giving Tuesday or I'm going to be left out? Or is it they're saying, like, wow, this is a no brainer. This is good. This is just good all around.
- [26:15]
Asha Curran
I think that question has changed a little bit over the. I think the answer to that question has changed a little bit over the years. So in the very beginning, the people at nonprofits who were doing Giving Tuesday, creating a campaign or whatever, were often the people in the organization who knew how to use social media. And that was often the younger people, which often meant they were more junior and they would do a great job with it. And then the organization's ears would kind of perk up, like, what's this all about? Maybe this is a day on the calendar we should pay attention to. And so there was this very sort of entrepreneurial quality to it in those early days. And, you know, nonprofits, you know, adopted it immediately and did incredible things. The very first nonprofit who changed the name was a nonprofit named Dress for Success, which helps women who are re entering the workforce after incarceration or whatever it might be to find professional clothes. And so they changed the name to Giving Shoes Day, and they did a big drive for shoe donations on the day. And we saw that and just like, big smiles on the whole team. Right? It was fun. It was creative. Now, that was a real decision moment, right? Because we could have issued a cease and desist letter and said, like, who do you think you are? You have to use the name and don't change it. And these are our logos, and this is the color, and this is our. Our brand guidelines, et cetera. But we didn't do that, nor did we say, like, let's just ignore it and pretend we didn't see them doing that. No, we celebrated it and we amplified it. Now over the years, I think it's become much more of an established day in the calendar. And, you know, I would not want to see anybody doing Giving Tuesday only because they feel FOMO or only because they feel that it's an important, you know, important day for somebody else, but not for them. Obviously, I prefer that people do Giving Tuesday out of genuine interest and passion. That said, the. The data is there to show that it's really a smart move to do something for Giving Tuesday. Right. This is a day, one of the only days of the year that people are looking for a target for their giving. That is not a luxury that nonprofits have most days of the year. Right, right, right. It's an issue that. That arises exactly twice a year, and that is on December 31st and on giving Tuesday. And. And then if it arises at other times, it's in react things that have happened in the world, natural or unnatural disasters. Right. And the desire to. To help them. So I think it has somewhat shifted over the years, but it's. It's simply incontrovertible that it's a really good idea to do something for it and to attempt to do something really creative this past Giving Tuesday is a great example. Nonprofits did such a good job and they did such a good job in a year that. That they might have really said, like, we're just gonna sit this out, right? We're gonna. We're gonna not make the ask because people are anxious and people are tense and, and there's so much going on and, you know, we don't want to over ask. This is something the nonprofit, you know, community does not always get right. Because if you don't ask, you're definitely not gonna get right. If you do ask, you still might not get, but it's likely that you will. Right? Or at least it's possible. So, you know, I think that the nonprofit community is largely responsible for that initial momentum around Giving Tuesday and then after that. I would say that it's one of the parts of the world of societies that are. That is very active in Giving Tuesday, but so many other parts are so active as well. And I think that's really important and for my personal growth on the sort of Journey of GivingTuesday, it's been really, really instructive to see how people approach giving money, the importance that they place around that, how they approach giving other things, and what the nonprofit sector bears responsibility for. In terms of the way. And now I'm speaking really only from a US perspective, although I know it's not true only of the US the way that we have come to. We have come to pose nonprofit to the public in a much more transactional way than I think is necessary. And I think the human heart doesn't respond to transactional. Right. It responds to emotional, relational, transformational. And so I think our efforts to bring those things into the conversation have been really positive.
- [30:53]
Kevin Gentry
I love that. And you are absolutely right. I do think the overwhelming notion is that giving is about, know, giving to needs and hitting people up and twisting their arm to give. And it's transactional and it's not. And it's this wonderful expression of being able to do something positive, solve a problem, really, you know, help improve, improve things. Well, I, I want to turn a little bit more to the data because you have the data. I have to confess, when givingtues he started, I was a bit of a curmudgeon. I was a big skeptic. I was like, well, giving should be promoted all year long. This feels contrived. I disagree. I don't like this. And then I said, well, this, this is okay. I gotta accept the data because there's so many more people are giving as a result of Giving Tuesday than would otherwise. And as you say, not just giving financially, but giving their time, leading even in efforts, just changing their mindset. So I'm a convert, but oh, so
- [31:55]
Asha Curran
glad, Kevin, we converted you. That's a victory.
- [32:00]
Kevin Gentry
Well, I want you to speak to the Data, give us a sense for what you're seeing. I mean, how has this spurred giving greater than otherwise would have occurred?
- [32:11]
Asha Curran
Yeah. So one of the original sort of skeptical questions that we would get a lot in early years was is this really additive money? Right.
- [32:21]
Kevin Gentry
Or is it just, you're just moving it around?
- [32:23]
Asha Curran
Like, is it like I would have donated 50 bucks to my favorite nonprofit on December 31st. I'm just gonna move it up and do do this now. The truth is, even from the inside, we could tell we would have like, you know, bet our our lives that it was absolutely not. That that was absolutely not what was happening. Because we heard obviously anecdotally from so many people or about so many people who were giving and they said they were giving for the first time. Right. I became involved in giving in whatever way because I was finally asked to. And that's, that's really like just an indictment in general on how little we're. Right. It really is. And I don't even necessarily mean an indictment on the nonprofit sector, although we, we don't engage as many people as we could. But just in general, why are we not providing citizens with more opportunities to be civically engaged. Right. To make, to contribute to causes because. And you know, whether they're millionaires or not. Right. So one thing that Giving Tuesday has done is really, really put a lot of momentum behind everyday giving, which I don't love that phrase, or sometimes we say grassroots giving. It really just means everyday non wealthy giving. Right. Which is really, really special. First of all, from a completely strategic perspective, everyday givers give most of the money that moves in this world philanthropically, by far, they get the least amount of attention, but they are by far the givers that contribute the most. I mean, if you consider things like remittances, we're just talking about billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. So I think that's been really important. So once we began to actually begin to do data work in earnest, we were actually able to show that givingtuesday was creating year over year, a net lift, so not moving that money around. And now I think, you know, I don't even think necessarily that it was the data that convince people. I think that the numbers were simply getting so big year after year that it just became obvious that it wasn't taking money from December 31st. And also that there's tons of data around. If somebody gives on Giving Tuesday, they're also more likely to give during the rest of December. So they're more likely. Yes. To give again on December 31st and not less likely because they already gave and they're more likely to be retained as donors by the organizations that they, that they gave to. And you know, the social proof is a reason for sure, but I think there's also a big mental and emotional payoff to giving and feeling what that reward is and then wanting to do it again. That is not necessarily the psychological mechanism that you're going to get if you sit at your desk on December 31st and write a check, check to a non profit, you know, you know, probably fairly little about for a tax break. Those mechanisms are simply not the same thing on any level.
- [35:17]
Kevin Gentry
Well, you know, this is, there's there's so much here about, you know, psychology and branding and you know, we know in marketing the power of repetition and you know, we can think as fundraisers, we're doing a, our best job to get the message out and inspire people to give. But it needs a boost. We all need a boost. We need deadlines, we need things to have, we need focus. And you have this wonderful benefit of being able to promote something that is so positive and wholesome and great and the media covers it and other people are saying, hey, I did this and did that. So you're, you're free riding effectively on all these fans who are saying, yeah, let's engage in Giving Tuesday. It's so, it's, it's phenomenal. So I really applaud you. I've got some other follow up questions. So first of all, back to you, Asha. You, you come from, you know, a lot background, a lot of nonprofit boards, a lot of engagement, a lot of organizational growth and activity, your educational background, how did, how did any of that prepare you for launching this experiment and, and building it in the way that you have?
- [36:27]
Asha Curran
Yeah, I don't know that anything could have really prepared me for it. I'm still learning on the job, that is the truth. But I think I did a lot of things before Giving Tuesday. In fact, I have a really weird resume and a very, let's say, nonlinear kind of career path. But when I look back on it, I do see that there is a theme of devolving of power. I really like to put agency in other people's hands. That's really rewarding and I feel like I've done that in a lot of different capacities. Giving Tuesday was just the most dramatic opportunity to do that in a way that felt like it was truly doing something that was an overall benefit for the world. But there were a lot of things before that, and Even at the 92nd Street Y, there were other projects that were almost like practice for Giving Tuesday because they came earlier, they were smaller, but still successful. They all had a sort of global element. They all had a sort of take it and do what you want with it element. So there was some practice for this before, before Giving Tuesday came in the world. But really Giving Tuesday was also then the template for a lot of other things that, that came after. But nothing will. Nothing will be Giving Tuesday again. But I. I have the. The fellowships I've been lucky to have since starting Giving Tuesday or being part of the team that started GivingTuesday are incredible opportunities for me. First of all, from a personal perspective, in the sense that I get really bored if I'm doing only one thing. I really like to have a lot of different intellectual inputs to keep myself fresh and keep my synapses firing and all of that. And then they were genuinely useful. For example, the fellowship that I did at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford was facilitated by my friend and board member, Rob Reich, who is one of the original architects of Giving Tuesday. And that fellowship is where I first started thinking about what our own data commons would look like. And that was so important because what do I know? Nothing. Right? I mean, I've never started a data commons. I'm certainly not a data scientist, certainly not a data analyst. So I talk to lots of really smart people at Stanford about data and how it works in their own sector and realizing that, that, you know, the, the philanthropic community is just way behind. You know, it was way behind. So the idea of creating a collaborative, transparent, open source data project that lots of different people could feed into and could use without paying for it is not actually groundbreaking. It just hadn't happened in the nonprofit sector. And I remember just laughing out loud at one point because I was researching different forms of data collaboratives in the retail sector and reading about how the galvanized steel dipping spoon industry had this data commons, essentially that all the companies that were involved had a stake in. Galvanized steel dipping spoons were contributing their data. Right. Having it analyzed, and then everybody. And anonymized, of course. And then everybody gets their report back. And yes, everybody knows that others could make more money, but they could make more money as well. Right. It just, it took us, I feel like, a long time to realize that the same principle works for us, that we need a. We need a complete picture of what's happening in the nonprofit world. And not just data from one angle. Right. One platform or one nonprofit or one media source, but to really understand the totality of what's happening even out, even as far as giving outside of nonprofits, because even if you only care about non profits, it's still instructive to know how giving and giving behaviors are working outside of it.
- [40:19]
Kevin Gentry
Well, I couldn't agree more, but I really applaud you. I so much experience, even this past weekend I was with a group of very generous philanthropists and they all are sort of going through the same thing. They start and, and they don't know what to do. And so they just reinvent the wheel and make a lot of mistakes and many of them get frustrated and quit. And then by the time they kind of figure it out, it's late in life and you've just got so much data that can inform us about these things, which we can, what ultimately can put more resources into helping get to the root causes of problems, come up with these solutions. I couldn't agree more. Many years ago, Mal Warwick, as a direct response fundraiser based in Berkeley, California, invited me to a conference where he shared an interesting enormous amount of data that he had done and again anonymized, contributed by lots of nonprofits about who plan givers were, who are the people who left you in their will. And there were these predictors, he said, like, you know, it tends to be people who are single, older in life, they generally are smaller dollar donors, they're asset rich, but cash poor and you know, you might consider focusing some of your communications there, et cetera, etc, just sharing that kind of stuff. Then ultimately, I mean, it loses all boats.
- [41:39]
Asha Curran
Absolutely, absolutely. And the thing I love best about being so involved in data and learning so much from the people who were doing, you know, as you said, we have been doing this work for years and years and years and at the Lilly School and at Candid and so forth, the list goes on. And now we think of ourselves as one big community trying to push all this forward. But the, the thing that I love most about it is that it yields good news.
- [42:06]
Kevin Gentry
Exactly.
- [42:07]
Asha Curran
You know, good news like we, we can segment people by the kind of generous behaviors that they exhibit and where they fit in the world, sort of demographically, regionally, that kind of thing. And the truth is that most people are generous full stop. And that's really, that's really nice news. Right. It's that people don't get tired of giving and people don't get, get sick of giving. And you know, people don't feel like they can only give if they're not tired or not worrying about other things, or not anxious or not scared or not economically secure. Giving is the antidote to anxiety about all those things.
- [42:43]
Kevin Gentry
All right, I got some wrap up questions first. Mentors comes up so much in these going big conversations. Were there people that really helped influence your thinking about being willing to kind of give it up and, and, and let you know, lead to this empowerment in agency or, or even just how you thought about growth or supporting some of these efforts? Were there some. What advice would you give to anyone listening about how we might think about mentors from your own experience?
- [43:10]
Asha Curran
Oh, you know, I, I have mentored so much in my own career and I have been mentored and I just find that nothing else makes such a difference to one's professional journey than real mentorship. And what I mean by that is someone who is deciding to put themselves in the seat and in the role of giving you really honest feedback and being your biggest champion, right? Really cheering you on, wanting your success, but not afraid to sit you down and say, I think these are the mistakes that you're making and I think you should work on fixing them or work on that together, et cetera. That has been so valuable because people are afraid to give really honest, honest feedback. I'd rather hear something, you know, that makes me cry than get over myself, right? Repair my ego and then really start working on it if it feels like it was right on the money, right? Not all, not all feedback is right on the money, but if it rang that, like if it, if it felt true and you kind of know that it's true even if you don't like it. So I think that's really important. One of my, one of my secret strategies is that if somebody has been a really important mentor to me, I like to ask them to be on my board so that I always keep them close. They're forced to keep mentoring me at the time that they serve on my board. So I mentioned, well, I mentioned Henry, who was my co founder. He was certainly a great mentor. Rob Reich, who I also mentioned at Stanford, one of the early architects, has been a great mentor. Lawrence Belfor, another board member, has been such a good mentor to me. I'm really lucky to have people in my life who have wanted me to be a success and taken time out of their own careers to, to, to make sure that that happened. And I try really, really hard to pay that forward.
- [44:51]
Kevin Gentry
Do you have any advice for how to seek out mentors? I mean, did you seek them out or did they tap you on the
- [44:57]
Asha Curran
shoulder, there's a bit of kismet and there's a bit of planning. I think that. That younger people who are earlier in their careers mistake not being micromanaged for good management. And it's not you shouldn't be micromanaged, but you should be managed earlier in your career. You. It's really important to have those people who are watching you, who are analyzing your work, who are telling you how you're doing, what you're doing right, and what you're doing not so right. But my impression is that that doesn't usually happen. People are trained to just do. Tick the boxes that they have to do through their day. Everybody goes home, right? They meet with their boss once a week, and that's it. I think a mistake that. That sometimes people make is that they'll want to go to the most senior person in an organization and say, will you be my mentor? Before building a relationship with them? And that's. That's hard, right? Because if there's a big junior, senior disparity, the person who's more senior probably has a million different priorities, some of which are mentoring people already who might be a little bit closer. So seniority and mentorship don't have to be synonymous. Someone can mentor you, even if they're your peers, if you feel like something. Absolutely. I have. I have. Technically, Actually, one of the programs that I founded at the 92nd Street Y was a mentor, was a fellowship called Women in Power, and I was a mentor for that program. I was a mentor for women who were far more accomplished than I was in their careers. But it doesn't matter, right? It's the. Again, it's the role you put yourself in. So even approaching a peer and saying, let's always read each other's writing and give feedback on it, right? I want you to, like, watch the way I interact with our co workers and, like, really tell me how you think I'm doing, what I could use more of, what I could use less of. And you do that as, like, sort of a mutual thing. So it's not always about going to CEO and saying, like, will you say, will you mentor me? But it is about putting that intention out into the world and then re recognizing that as much as you might need a mentor, you are also the perfect person to be a mentor for someone else.
- [47:02]
Kevin Gentry
Excellent. All right. Another question I almost always ask is looking back at a younger version of yourself, knowing what you now know, what would you tell that younger version of yourself to do differently? Now, you can look at it through the lens possibly of Giving Tuesday, because I'm sure you now can look back and see so many different things, but maybe it's a whole other different area. How would you respond to that? I think our audience always values that in terms of how to think about their own lives. Lives and to think forward.
- [47:30]
Asha Curran
Yeah. So in terms of younger people, so like people just getting started on their career, what I have always advised is, and these are usually people who are. Want to go into the nonprofit sector and want advice on that. And what I advise might seem really counterintuitive, but it is. Don't seek out a job only in the cause area you care about. That's not the most important thing right out of college or grad school. Right. The most important thing is gaining skills. Nothing is more important than that. Getting mentorship if you can and really understanding what kind of work environment you thrive in and what kind you really don't. If you are someone who is passionate about the environment and you find a job at a climate change company or agency organization, it's very common to stick it out even if they're miserable. And that's not the point. Right. The climate doesn't need you in particular so badly that you shouldn't get a better job where you're actually gaining in skills and gaining in mentorship. Once you're a CEO, you go, you do the organization that is like exactly the right fit for, for what you really care about. But in the beginning you are just learning, learning, learning and be a good colleague. It will, it will just rebound to you in so, so many ways. Be a good, generous, non gossipy colleague. That's, that's the generosity behaviors that I would recommend for being in a work environment.
- [48:53]
Kevin Gentry
Well, that's the whole spirit of the generosity of giving to you.
- [48:57]
Asha Curran
Absolutely the best. Yes.
- [48:59]
Kevin Gentry
Well, all right. So we're recording and releasing this episode many months before Giving Tuesday. This is March of 2026. How should anyone listening in the. Either in the nonprofit sector or even in the. The on the giving side think about now, how to think, how to begin to sort of prepare themselves mentally and financially and philosophically for Giving Tuesday this year?
- [49:30]
Asha Curran
Yeah, well, you know, you're, you're one of the first things you thought which was when you heard about Giving Tuesday, which was giving should be every day. You know, happily now. Giving Tuesday is every day. There are leaders around the world are working on this every single day of the year and certainly not only on Tuesdays. It really has become more of a banner for community led Change. But in terms of thinking about Giving Tuesday the day, I think that, that it's worth thinking about well in advance for sure. And it's worth thinking about. One of the developments that I love the most in Giving Tuesday World is coalition campaigns. So that means organizations that are coming together around a cause or a mission area or an identity or region and they're working together instead of in competition. I love that because they tend to do very well. People respond to that a lot better than if they feel that they're being marketed at Excellent Ayesha. People are so allergic to inauthenticity these days. Right. And if communication feels very corporate. Right. Very slick, it actually doesn't do the job that you want it to do. If you're telling a story about why your mission is so important and you're linking arms with others as you do that, people respond much better. But also as a growth project for you and for your organization, it's just transformative because you're getting yourself out of that space where you think, I run this sort of organization. There are six other organizations like that in my community. But we're in competition with each other, right? Instead. No, you're not. Right. You're all driving toward the same thing. You're all driving toward addressing the same problem. And you will do a much better job at it if you face that problem together. Even if, yes, sometimes somebody makes more money and sometimes somebody makes less. So thinking about that kind of thing really happens well in advance. And then I think just in general to really start thinking about, to start thinking about fundraising more in terms of engagement because it's. Engagement is really going to be the big challenge for nonprofits in the next few years. Right. It's going to be engagement and going to be participation. Those are going to be the words. You're not going to inspire broad based participation by focusing only on the perceived value of what a person has to give you. If that's only money. Right. People have so many other things that they can bring to the table. And if you're talking about the younger generation and you make them a champion for you now those you know that younger generation is going to grow up, they're going to start making their own money. Right. And then, and then you have somebody who is already really committed, already really committed to you. So people aren't ATMs, relationships first, community first.
- [52:16]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Well, I'm so glad you made that point. We could do a whole going big episode just on the power of genuine engagement and how it leads to greater Generosity is another one of the things. It took me a long time to figure this out and realize that, but, boy, is that. That is that powerful. All right, here's the. Here's the closing question. So take us out based on, you know, your. Your approach with respect to Giving Tuesday, and you touched on this a little bit about how you look back and what you might do differently. But for anyone listening around the world, how would you have us think, encourage us to think about living a life of greater meaning and purpose by just. Just thinking about how we experiment, how we test, how we. How we just begin all of this. Just. Just give us some words of encouragement and inspiration.
- [53:07]
Asha Curran
So do you mean for the nonprofit sector specifically or just in general?
- [53:11]
Kevin Gentry
Just in general. I mean, it's. It's kind of hand in glove anyway, but just in general it is.
- [53:16]
Asha Curran
I mean, and there are. Yeah, there are so many people who have no connection to the nonprofit sector who participate in Giving Tuesday. I think one of the things that I have really loved over the years is when I see. Is when I see people who've heard about the idea and kind of want to get in on the action, just think of something really sweet to do. So in the very first Giving Tuesday, we heard about this story of some people in Hong Kong who started this, like, mini citywide movement to do laundry and then leave the coins for the next person who was going to do the laundry, just leave them in the machine. That kind of story is so special to me because I think when we think about how we ourselves live every day, right? You wake up in the morning, you do whatever you're gonna do until you come home at night and you go to bed and you eat dinner, you go to bed. What is it that made your. Your day good? Right? If you had a really good day, what was it that made it good? Chances are it's because somebody showed you some real consideration or attention or mindfulness or kindness. Those are generosity behaviors. So I like to have people think about, what are the tiny ways I made someone's day better? And what are the tiny ways that somebody else made my day better? And then how can I do more of those things? Really simple, really small, but totally transformative for the giver and for others.
- [54:43]
Kevin Gentry
Wow. Asher Kern, what a great privilege it's been to have you as our guest today. Again, as I said, you're perfect for the Going Big podcast and really appreciate all that you're doing to inspire this huge, huge new movement of generous giving, which is in no way a directed movement. Thank you for just sort of spurring it on in the manner that you and your team have. Thanks for joining us.
- [55:04]
Asha Curran
Thanks, Heaven. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
- [55:07]
Kevin Gentry
All right, all the best to you.
- [55:08]
Asha Curran
Thank you.
- [55:09]
Kevin Gentry
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep Going Big. See you next time on the Going Big Podcast.