On December 13, the Community Foundation announced the results of this year’s Giving Spree held on November 7. The incredible total: $3.6 million in gifts for 105 local nonprofits doing important work in every corner of our Adams County community.
Why wait weeks for such terrific news? Well, if this were a typical giving day, focused on raising money by credit card though a website, our community, like many others, would raise about $300,000 and announce those results within a few days.
But here in Adams County, our Giving Spree is more. It is about creating a culture of giving, focused on donors giving, rather than on nonprofits asking. It’s about giving together—and encouraging everyone to give.
The Giving Spree is about giving donors knowledge and choices about how and what they give, which nonprofits they support, and whether their gift will support those nonprofits today with an annual gift, or forever with a one-time gift to an endowment fund. All that choice, all of those options, makes for a rich web of caring and giving, and that takes time to process.
Our giving day is different from every other giving day around the country for a few reasons.
Our participating nonprofits have an “all for one and one for all” spirit, encouraging donors to participate in the Giving Spree, not simply to make one gift to their one nonprofit.
I believe that spirit resulted in this year’s incredible results. But as wonderful as this year’s big total number is, bigger than ever before, it’s not what the Giving Spree was about this year – or any year. Because making the Giving Spree about donors giving more money year in and year out is not sustainable.
The real success of Adams County’s Giving Spree—and never more so than this year—is the fact that more nonprofits will benefit than ever before, not just today, but forever.
This year we challenged participating nonprofits to use the Giving Spree to encourage their donors to make an extra gift to their nonprofit. To reach out and re-engage donors who had paused their regular giving and encourage donors to support their nonprofit’s work with a gift to their designated endowment fund that will sustain that work for generations. And that element of endowment giving is unique to our community’s day of giving.
Once those individual designated endowment funds reach a minimum of $10,000, a percentage of that fund is automatically granted back to the nonprofit each and every year, forever.
Last year, four nonprofits reached that $10,000 threshold, joining 26 others whose endowment funds at the Community Foundation already generate an annual grant to the designated nonprofit.
This year, donors gave $1 million in “forever” gifts—one-time gifts to endowment funds—and lifted 47 additional nonprofits over that important threshold.
Now, on February 14 and every Valentines Day thereafter, all of these local nonprofits will receive grants from their designated endowments at the Community Foundation. These grants will be an annual reminder of the generosity of those donors who stepped up in a big way this year to support what’s good in Adams County with a gift that will last forever.
Ralph Serpe is president & CEO of the Adams County Community Foundation, the producers of the Adams County Community Foundation Giving Spree. He can be reached at rserpe@adamscountycf.org or 717-337-0060. For detailed Giving Spree results, visit www.ACCFGivingSpree.org