Giving Tuesday tries to rival Black Friday

The campaign to give philanthropy its own seasonal day—like Black Friday and Cyber Monday—has quickly taken off, especially on social media.

Giving Tuesday is only on its third year, but it's quickly become a sensation with non-profits, donors and charitable causes. It's engaged more 13,000 non-profit and corporate partners—from Microsoft and PayPal to CVS Health and Toys R Us—and the Red Cross and countless other charities. While numbers are hard to come by since the charities and pledges are so diverse, organizers say the campaign has increased awareness and donations to charity.

GivingTower screen image

Source: GivingTower

This year, actor Ed Norton has given the movement a boost through a website called Crowdrise. Crowdrise is offering an app that allows people to see the amount of giving through a virtual tower. Every donation will be a "brick in the tower" and will feature a photo of the donor.

"We wanted to do something fun," Robert Wolfe, founder of the Moosejaw outdoor apparel company and a co-founder of Crowdrise, told USA Today. "At Crowdrise, our whole goal is to make this fun and interesting and notable, and also really try to figure out a way to take this movement, which lives all over the Internet, and find a place where everyone can sort of rally together."

In 2012, Henry Timms, executive director of New York's 92nd St. Y, co-founded Giving Tuesday with the United Nations Foundation. The hashtag #GivingTuesday is being used to tag comments, gifts and images on social media.

To read the full, USA Today story, click here.