Giving Tuesday donations last year raised £6k a minute

GIVING Tuesday last year broke a Guinness World Record for the most online donations in 24 hours as people gave away £35 million to good causes globally.

Why not donate to charity on #givingtuesday? Picture: John Devlin

Online donations raised £6,000 a minute for UK charities with more than 1,400 charities and businesses connecting with the movement which reached hundreds of thousands of people.

Last year the event was the top trend on Twitter throughout the day with more than 100,000 mentions using #givingtuesday.

Celebrities and politicians including Stephen Fry, JK Rowling, Emma Watson, Miranda Hart, Gary Lineker, Lily Allen, David Baddiel, Peter Andre, David Tennant and Jeremy Corbyn backed the day.

#givingtuesday now runs in over 70 countries around the world including the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Tanzania, Russia and Ireland.

Last year Royal Mail stamped every letter posted on the day to with a #givingtuesday postmark to raise awareness of the day.

The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which runs #givingtuesday in the UK, is offering a £100 welcome bonus to donate to a good cause for people opening up new charity accounts before 30 November.

Kim Roberts, senior campaigns officer at CAF, said: “We would like to encourage as many charities as possible to become partners so we can all work together to make #givingtuesday 2016 the best yet.”