In addition to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there is now #GivingTuesday to encourage people to donate to charities online. And organizers report that this year's third annual #GivingTuesday, held December 2, was a success.

Charitable donations made this past Tuesday increased from last year’s total, suggesting that giving every year on this date, one of the opening days of the holiday season, might well become a tradition, says Sheila Herrling, senior vice president for social innovation at the Case Foundation, one of the early supporters of the effort.

This year, an initial total of $46 million was raised, an increase of 63 percent over last year. The total number of donations is estimated to have increased by at least 53 percent, and the total average donation is estimated to have increased by 6 percent. The final total will grow as more offline donations are processed.

Nearly 300,000 online and offline contributions to charities were made during the 24-hour period, according to the Case Foundation and Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The estimates are based on contributions tracked by nonprofit processing platforms such as Blackbaud, DonorPerfect, GlobalGiving, Network for Good and Razoo.

“Just as Cyber Monday and Black Friday are key indicators of consumer sentiment and economic health, this data on #GivingTuesday can serve as an indicator of the health of our giving economy,” says Herrling. “We’re excited about what we have seen, as millions of people came together to support more than 20,000 nonprofits across the globe, demonstrating the true spirit of the holidays and proving that, collectively, small gifts can have big results.”

#GivingTuesday is driven by social media and online giving campaigns, demonstrating the popularity of online giving in recent years, says the foundation. Over the course of the day, more than 698,000 tweets mentioning the #GivingTuesday hashtag were shared, an increase of 159 percent from 2013.

“Not only is the growth in the amount given important, but the number of transactions also increased and the number of organizations involved grew,” says Dr. Una Osili, director of research at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “We will be looking at this long-term to see what this one day’s increases mean to overall giving.”