EPIC and the Northern California Association of Nonprofits have teamed up with several local organizations to bring Giving Local Tuesday to the north coast region. Taking place December 2, 2014 – the Tuesday after Thanksgiving – the Giving Tuesday campaign aims to harness the power of social media to create a national movement around the holidays dedicated to giving, similar to how Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become synonymous with holiday shopping. The organizations are seeking to inspire a spirit of generosity, personal philanthropy and greater levels of giving to local organizations during the holiday season.
“We need to cultivate our generosity out of appreciation for the services provided by nonprofits and out of reverence for the future of our community,” said Natalynne DeLapp, Executive Director of EPIC. “We all have a choice in how we spend our hard-earned money; during this season of thanks and generosity I encourage people to give to your local public interest organizations because you value and benefit from their missions, and because you believe in our collective ability to positively impact the world.”
The Northern California Association of Nonprofits includes more than one hundred local nonprofit organizations that provide key services to the community. Member organizations exist to solve social problems and advance important causes. Local nonprofits have genuine interests in making our communities better places to live, help create a vibrant arts and culture scene, work to protect the environment, defend human and civil rights, provide safety net services, and assure access to information in the form of public media.
“It is our hope that people across the region realize that they have the power to make significant differences in the community through their gifts to local organizations – whether that be through a donation of $5 or $5,000,” shared Amy Jester, NorCAN Program Manager. She continued, “Giving Local Tuesday is a fun way to inspire people to act and to encourage them to lovingly motivate their social networks to give money, time or needed resources.”
The Giving Tuesday movement was started in 2012. Seeing an opportunity to channel the generous spirit of the holiday season to inspire action around charitable giving, a group of friends and partners, led by the 92nd Street Y (92Y) in New York, came together to find ways to promote and celebrate the great American tradition of giving and the beginnings of the campaign were born. 92Y worked with partner organizations to harness the power of social media to create a national movement around the holidays dedicated to giving, similar to how Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become days that are, today, synonymous with holiday shopping. Local organizations have adopted the campaign with the twist of giving local.
“The retail industry has long benefited from seasonal shopping that symbolically kicks off with “Black Friday” – a day that has since inspired “Small Business Saturday” and “Cyber Monday.” Giving Tuesday, then, serves as a celebratory, fully connected day to kick off the giving season by making generous holiday and end-of-year charitable gifts,” said Denise Marshall, Director of the McLean Foundation. “The chance to give only begins with Giving Local Tuesday. We are encouraging people to think of the entire month of December as an opportunity to lend some year-end support to the numerous organizations that do such great work in our beloved community.”
“Giving is also good for businesses. “Positive community relationships as well as marketing opportunities can come from business participation in Giving Local Tuesday. It can also be a way to boost employee engagement, morale and team work,” said Fawn Scheer of Greenway Partners, an Arcata based consulting firm that operates The Link, a business incubator and collaboration space.
Maggie Kraft, Executive Director of Area 1 Agency on Aging explained, “We are participating in Giving Tuesday because coordinated giving efforts can have great impacts in communities,” she continued, “If you have money, please give, even if just a little. If you have time, there are so many ways to give it. It isn’t hard and it doesn’t hurt. Look around and just join in. Giving evokes gratitude, its contagious, and there have been several studies that show that giving is actually good for your health!”
Our goal at EPIC is to build upon the already strong culture of philanthropy to further strengthen the resiliency of the non-profit sector. If all groups become stronger, EPIC will become stronger and more capable. EPIC is focused on connecting working and wildland forests into whole healthy landscapes for flourishing nature and wildlife, in order to safeguard our valuable living resources in a changing climate for current and future generations. Click here to donate to EPIC.
For more information about Giving Local Tuesday, visit northerncalifornianonprofits.org
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