Going Big with Asha Curran: Building GivingTuesday into a Shared Culture of Generosity

What happens when you stop trying to control a movement and instead design it to be owned by everyone?

In this episode of the Going Big! Podcast, host Kevin Gentry sits down with Asha Curran, Chief Executive Officer of GivingTuesday, the global generosity movement that began as a simple idea and grew into a year-round force for good across more than one hundred countries. Initially conceived as a counter-movement against Black Friday, #GivingTuesday was invented to encourage people to do good through donations and acts of service every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Asha breaks down how it went from a hashtag to an open source movement by rejecting old rules around branding, permission, and control, and choosing radical trust, co-creation, and civic agency instead.

You will hear how coalition campaigns and collaboration outperform competition, why small and medium nonprofit organizations often move faster than big institutions, and why people respond to authentic storytelling, not slick corporate messaging. Asha also explains how donors are influenced by social proof, why GivingTuesday creates net new giving instead of just moving donations around, and how generosity itself can be an antidote to anxiety.

The conversation closes with practical wisdom on mentorship, skill building early in your career, and simple ways anyone can live a more meaningful life through everyday generosity behaviors.

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