Nonprofits are a difficult market to navigate for all involved. For those that are running the nonprofits, it is often difficult to gain the amount of funding needed to move forward on key ideas and keep employee retention high. For those that are trying to donate to or volunteer with nonprofits, how do you choose?
There are an innumerable amount of nonprofits out there for varying causes. How do you pick just one? How could you possibly know which ones are out there? The Seattle Foundation is trying to help both sides of this problem through a program called GiveBIG.
What Is GiveBIG?
GiveBIG is a charitable giving event that is put together by the Seattle Foundation. They see the importance of philanthropy in creating opportunities for the local community, so they strive to help bolster it through finances and awareness. They serve more than 1,200 individuals, businesses, families, and nonprofits in the Seattle area, and strive to better the local, national and global community through their work.
The Seattle Foundation began GiveBIG on June 23, 2011. The unique aspect about GiveBIG is that it’s only online, and it’s only one day (TODAY!). That means that this event has 24 hours to generate enough donations to make a difference throughout the community, and they have been very successful.
In 2014, GiveBIG raised more than $12.8 million for nonprofit organizations. The way it works is, the residents of King County go on to the website and look for a nonprofit that they identify with and would like to donate to. There are more than 1600 nonprofits on the list, doing a large variety of work for the community. You pick your preferred nonprofit, and donate online.
The Seattle Foundation encourages nonprofits to secure matching grants in order to gain even more income. This is not only an effective strategy for getting donations, but it also raises local awareness about what types of nonprofits are out there that people may be interested in helping with, whether that is monetarily or through volunteering.
With over 1600 nonprofits on the GiveBIG list, there are plenty of different categories to choose from to support through this GiveBIG campaign. Be sure to browse, read and learn a thing or two about nonprofits in your area. And don’t forget that you just have TODAY, May 10th to donate!