GivingTuesday happens on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving with two huge shopping days in between, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Founders of GivingTuesday hoped to inspire more generosity and not only change communities, but the world.
Whether it’s volunteering your time, helping a neighbor, or just giving money to your favorite nonprofit, there are lots of ways to show generosity. You can find ways to be inspired here.
Andy Cier, the director of development and communications for Holy Cross Ministries, says they use GivingTuesday to help reach their year-end financial goals.
“I think that GivingTuesday was a brilliant idea,” Cier said. “And we're using it as kind of a springboard for our end of year annual appeal that we do. At the end of every year, we ask our donors and potential donors to please give, because we have a lot of needs. So, the end of the year is usually really important for us because by this time of the year, we know what we're going to see next year in terms of a budget, and it always goes up. We tend to be growing and our needs are growing and our numbers of clients are growing.”
One of their biggest needs he says is to raise money for the medical debt advocates program.
“We're seeing so much need in the area of medical debt,” Cier said. “If anybody gets any kind of, you know, serious illness or anything like that, it can just crush people financially. So, we're really trying to help, particularly the immigrant community, with their medical debt.”
Admittedly, this is a tough time of year to raise money, given the holidays ahead and just coming off of Live PC Give PC, when so many have already given.
“This year, I think there's more of a struggle for revenue – that's what I'm hearing,” he said. “And then I know also at Live PC Give PC, the number of donors went up, but the total donations went down. I think that's really more of a sign of our economy. I think a lot of nonprofits - and I know we are - we're very much looking at needing to increase donations just because of greater need and the economy kind of shifting in a flatter downward direction in certain things.”
Holy Cross Ministries is launching its end-of-year appeal and for those interested in donating, you can find them online at hcmutah.org.
If you'd like to support KPCW this GivingTuesday, click here.
