"Giving Day" Catching on Nationally

Nonprofit organizations located in Colorado have followed in the footsteps of states like Minnesota and Texas and created their own holiday. "Giving Day" is a 24-hour holiday in which nonprofit organizations in a certain state attempt to get the highest amount of people to donate. "Giving Day" has raised millions of dollars for other states and so on December 8, 2010 (after discovering they had statistically lower giving as compared to other states) Colorado launched its first annual "Giving Day."

Nonprofit executives for more than 500 charities called the campaign, which netted them over 18, 700 donations totaling $8.7 million, "Give Where You Live." The charities chose a grassroots approach and it worked better than other efforts. For example, in 2007, Colorado launched a website called GivingFirst.org, a site that brings together donors and charities. The website netted only $3.6 million in the course of 3 years. "Give Where You Live" more than doubled that in 24 hours. It's important to note that another reason for "Giving Day" was to raise awareness for GivingFirst and to get more charities to register with the site.

Perhaps, most surprising, organizations with the highest amount of donations were not necessarily the organizations with the most dollars raised or with the largest donations. The top three charities that had the most donations were the Denver Rescue Mission (bringing in 500 donations), Food Bank of the Rockies (with 350 donations), the Jeffco Action Center (300 donations). The organizations with the most money raised, however, were mostly children's organizations including Tennyson Center bringing in $813,000 and Advocates 4 Children with a total of $220,000. "It was the first time for everyone to come together and support our state in a time where they (charities) really need our support the most," says Jane McGillem, representative for the PR firm for the campaign.

For extra incentive for the organizations to push the holiday and for people to give was a $320,000 pool of matching funds. The funds were provided through a $250,000 gift from First Bank and local businesses and added 4 cents to every dollar raised. To insure, that 100 percent of donations for the day went to charity, The Community First Foundation and a $50,000 gift from First Bank covered credit card processing fees. Considering that Colorado is not the first state to implement a "Giving Day" and experience such astounding results, it certainly wouldn't be surprising if it wasn't the last.

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