Pro-life, pro-abortion groups vie for donations on Giving Tuesday

Tuesday, Dec. 3, is designated as Giving Tuesday, when members of the public are encouraged to donate to nonprofits. Organizations across the spectrum vie for the attention of potential donors, including nonprofits on both sides of the abortion debate.

Melinda Gates, the former wife of Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates will match up to $1 million in Giving Tuesday donations for two charities that say they support women, according to her company Pivotal Ventures. Gates released a video on Tuesday voicing concern that less than 2% of charitable giving in the United States goes to support women and girls. She pledged to match up to $500,000 in donations to the Vote Mama Foundation, a PAC supporting Democratic mothers running for public offices on a local or national scale. She pledged to match another $500,000 in donations to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, a group that aims to strengthen and support family caregivers.

By “supporting women” does Gates mean supporting abortion? While the Institute for Caregivers has not directly advocated for abortion, the Vote Mama Foundation has backed candidates who do support abortion. The group backed the election of pro-abortion Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and supported the election of nearly a dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives abortion caucus to office. The group also included men who identify as transgender women in its description of mothers on its website. 

Gates has historically supported pro-abortion groups and pledged to give $1 billion across the next two years to groups she feels advance the power of women globally. At least $200 million is specifically earmarked for grants to groups that support abortion, according to the company’s May announcement. Gates is hardly the only abortion advocate racking up funding this Tuesday. The international nonprofit supporting nonprofits, GlobalGiving, vowed to match all donations to organizations it works with across the world. The group hosts several funding drives supporting abortion access in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Kenya, along with Latin America and the United States.

However, GlobalGiving also hosts several pro-life causes, including drives to support and equip women in Lithuania and Thailand to keep their babies. The nonprofit also hosts other pro-life adjacent causes like giving prenatal care to the poor and supporting safe childbirth in Pakistan and Uganda. 

How are established pro-life groups campaigning on Giving Tuesday? All online donations to Americans United for Life made on Dec. 3 will be tripled, according to spokeswoman Alison Centofante. The total contributions to Stand for Life’s Giving Tuesday campaign will be doubled up to $25,000, meaning the pro-life advocacy group may receive up to $50,000 this week as part of the doubling campaign.

What is Giving Tuesday? Officially established in 2012, the charitable holiday is meant to juxtapose Black Friday and Cyber Monday and encourage charity after the first round of holiday consumerism. Giving Tuesday advocates also encourage people to give resources beyond money, like donating canned goods to a local food bank or unneeded household items to secondhand charity stores. Giving time volunteering at a charity or furthering a cause is also encouraged as a way to celebrate Giving Tuesday. The official Giving Tuesday Data Commons estimated that people across the world shelled out just over $3 billion within the event’s 24 hours in 2023. However, a September report by the global research company Ipsos found that only about 36% percent of adults know about the event, with only about 15% having previously participated.

Dig deeper: Read my report on Forbes’ 2023 projections for Giving Tuesday.