The National Day of Giving is held on Tuesday immediately after American Thanksgiving. This takes place on Thursday, the fourth Thursday of November. National Day of Giving was established to encourage the “giving season”, reminding people that holidays are more than commercialization and consumerism.

Two organizations, the 92nd street Y and United Nations Foundation, came together to create National Day of Giving in 2012. This was about a month prior to the year’s Thanksgiving. They wanted to create a day dedicated to celebrating America’s great tradition of generosity of giving.

Many leaders in social media, philanthropy, and grassroots joined the fray quickly. They created a group of founding partners, including United Nations Foundation (Cisco, Mashable), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Sony, Aldo and Groupon), UNICEF, UNICEF and Google. Mashable, a technology website, made the first announcement about National Day of Giving. The Washington Post, Huffington Post and ABC News all covered the first National Day of Giving extensively. This helped the scheme gain a lot of popularity quickly.

National Day of Giving is celebrated every year. It has the simple goal of encouraging people, families, schools and businesses to help the less fortunate. In 2013, more organizations joined the effort, including eBay, which gives a portion of its sales proceeds from a week of December to National Day of Giving, and Kevin Cole, a fashion designer who designed awareness ID bracelets and gave 100% of the proceeds towards National Day of Giving.

Many have praised National Day of Giving, which includes the Chronicle of Philanthropy (a newspaper that covers nonprofits), as an antidote for consumer culture and a way to encourage people to give back.

This can be done in many ways. Recent ideas include organizing fundraisers with the intent of donating the proceeds to charity. There are many other ways to give money and help others.

These include blood drives that provide some assistance to local hospitals and volunteer fairs where people can pledge their time to help community projects. Families also give food from their homes to local pantries. To raise awareness and encourage people giving to charities, the hashtag #GivingTuesday has been created.

You can join the National Day of Giving’s Social Media Ambassadors team if you wish. They are committed to spreading #GivingTuesday’s message and taking action together to give back. The truth is, there are many charities around the globe, many of them located near you.

Each of these people could use your support. So find the cause that’s most important to you, such as fighting cancer or buying schoolbooks for very poor children, and get involved! You can share your story on National Day of Giving’s official site to share it with the world, no matter how you celebrate the day.