Let’s Give More than Dollars this Giving Tuesday
The Tuesday after Thanksgiving has been deemed Giving Tuesday, a day to open our hearts as we have opened our wallets for holiday and personal shopping. Giving Tuesday is a day to support the organizations that are nearest and dearest to you as we begin the year-end giving season. My favorite part of Giving Tuesday is that it originated to encourage the giving of things other than money to their favorite organizations. For many, this original intent for the day has gotten lost in translation. Still, this is the holiday made for young professionals starting their philanthropic legacy because it gives us a chance to look for other, sometimes more impactful ways, to get involved with organizations. It is essential that volunteering is equivalent to $25.43 an hour. Those are dollars that many organizations don’t have. Those are staff that organizations might not have. That is valuable time that could be invested in growing the capacity of the organization.
As young professionals that might not have the financial status to be able to give as much as we would like, Giving Tuesday spirit of giving time, talent, and resources to the organizations nearest and dearest to our hearts. So what does giving time, talent, and help mean?
Giving Time:
Organizations have opportunities to give your time to help provide vital services that are at the core of the organization. Please do not get this confused with asking an organization to build volunteer experiences for your friends or company. There are plenty of organizations that have listed volunteer needs that are easy plug-in-play. Asking an organization to create a volunteer activity specifically for you is taking valuable staff time from the organizational mission to create a volunteer opportunity that they might not need as much as something else.
Give Talent:
Are smaller grassroots organizations near and dear to your heart? Have you ever reached out to understand how your particular skill set might benefit the organization? Smaller organizations would love to have your accounting, marketing, administrative, program management, etc., eye to help them with a project or mentor them to grow their capabilities.
Give Resources:
Sharing your network and your platform with organizations that are close to your heart can introduce your network to organizations that you love. This can create new donors and volunteers for the organization. So why not shout your favorite organizations and why from the rooftop!
Taking a bit of my own advice, it would be wrong if I didn’t end this post with a list of organizations that I am supporting now and forever. Organizations I am giving my time, talent, and resources to:
