Will donating to charity ever be as popular as shopping during the holiday season?
A partnership of nonprofits hopes so.
For many people, the holiday shopping marathon began on Thanksgiving day, with some national chains opening their doors just hours after the traditional turkey dinner. Then comes Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, which has morphed into Cyber Week.
Now, there's a new campaign asking you to open your wallet _ Giving Tuesday.
The Giving Tuesday website says the effort, coming on the heels of days devoted to consumerism, is designed "to create a national day of giving at the start of the annual holiday season. It celebrates and encourages charitable activities that support nonprofit organizations."
Several Seattle-based nonprofits are participating in this inaugural effort. Auburn Youth Resources administers the services provided at Enumclaw Youth and Family Services, and Washington FIRST Robotics organizes the annual robotics competitions that Enumclaw High School students have been participating in the last few years. Participatns also include larger organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and InvestED.
The effort includes the Twitter hashtag #GivingTuesday, designed to help spread the word.
What do you think? Can a social media push get people giving more of their money and time to charities during the holiday season?
Yes, I do think social media will play a significant role in this effort. Besides spreading the word with facebook and twitter (which I don't know how to do!), the Giving Tuesday website, which is not raising funds itself, alerts us to so many opportunities to give our time as well as funds. If you go to this website you will likely see one of your special interests or favorite charities represented with a statement about what you can do to help them right now, whether your interest is poverty, animals, religious organizations, music, science, youth, environment, arts, water, education, etc etc etc! Under IDEAS, click on Individuals and Families to see what activities might work for you, and especially some that will get children involved. And today is the Big Day, but that doesn't mean we can't use these ideas all season and all year long. I just watched the CARE video that accompanies the Patch article, and from there watched several others that came up afterwards. So many organizations are already participating in this newly-launched effort. Maybe next year we can include some from Enumclaw. (And meanwhile, we can peruse recent Patch articles for very local ways to give.)