What motivates people to donate to charities or causes they care about is often deeply personal. Donors name family members or friends who have survived an illness or have died. They talk about tearful conversations with their children. They point to their ambitions for how their communities and the larger world can be improved.
Ahead of GivingTuesday, The Associated Press interviewed people from across the country with diverse life experiences about why they give, which organizations they want to support and how they plan their donations throughout the year.
While not everyone will participate in GivingTuesday, which started as a hashtag in 2012, the date has become a central part of fundraising for nonprofits and a sort of last chance to meet their budget goals for the following year.
These interviews have been edited for length:
HOUSTON – Longtime Houston resident Monica Fulton, 51, is prioritizing donations to organizations that serve the city’s residents. She has been a volunteer at the Houston Food Bank for decades, doing “everything but the cold room.” Because I don’t like the cold,” she joked.
Fulton, who is originally from Panama, sees her donations and volunteer work as a way to make a difference, something she has tried to pass on to her children, who are now 18 and 20 years old.
“You look at what’s happening in the world and you often feel helpless. And what I try to teach my kids, instead of feeling helpless, is to find a little patch of grass that you can make better,” she said.
Typically, at the beginning of the year, Fulton sets aside the money she wants to give to nonprofits, with most of it going to a food bank, a homeless shelter, a women’s fund and an arts education organization. But she’s keeping some aside to respond more flexibly, including on GivingTuesday, when she looks for nonprofits running matching campaigns.
“My advice to people for Giving Tuesday is to do a little research and see who needs help, who has appropriate challenges,” she said. “And that makes it fun and exciting to think that even if you give something small, it will be doubled or tripled.”
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CHICAGO – Alicia Bailey said her philanthropic giving wasn’t always intentional.
Bailey, a former producer who now works in the real estate industry, gave $5 when he visited a store or attended a charity gala invited by a family member. That changed in 2018 when she helped organize a group of donors who pooled their money to support small organizations serving women and girls on Chicago’s South Side.
Bailey’s involvement in philanthropy has since grown to the point where she joined the board of the Chicago Foundation for Women, which houses her giving circle and also makes her own grants.
“To go through the process of understanding and educating about the grant process, all the way through to making decisions and doing site visits, and seeing and hearing the work that is actually happening in the Chicagoland area and being able to put faces, names and sounds for these women who are making things possible with very little,” Bailey said this was incredibly helpful to her.
The Giving Circle provides relatively small grants to organizations with budgets of less than $500,000, where these grants can make a big difference.
“People might have an idea of, ‘My dollars are too small, they shouldn’t matter,’ right?” Bailey said. “But in these cases we know that it is because people give what they can that it literally happens.” has changed the way organizations can do their work. And then that changes lives in the community.”
She doesn’t plan to mark GivingTuesday specifically for donations, because she’s already found ways through the foundation and the giving circle to pursue her mission of improving the lives of women, girls and gender-nonconforming people around her.
“I’ll be doing a lot of the same work I’ve been doing every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday,” Bailey said, although she’s glad the date will get many people thinking about how they can make a difference in a cause that affects them interests. about.
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ATLANTA — The amount Ruben Brooks, 56, will give each year varies, but what doesn’t change are the causes he supports: financial literacy, college scholarships and mentoring youth in the African American community.
“If you want a healthier society, if you want a more productive society, a safer society, then it probably behooves all of us to put in the effort to bring about the outcome you want,” said Brooks, Atlanta’s chief operating officer. Beltline.
Years ago, he volunteered as a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, an organization he continues to support financially, along with Junior Achievement of Georgia, where he now serves as a board member. Although he has less time to volunteer these days, he has expanded his network to students receiving scholarships through another nonprofit, the Ezekiel Taylor Foundation, which he sometimes hosts at his home.
“Hearing the stories, hearing the challenges, providing solutions, letting them know that I’m available, my friends are available and there are solutions to the problems they’re going to face,” Brooks said of his time with those students.
He usually makes his donations in November and December, when he knows his income for the year, partly because he claims tax benefits. Although he may donate on GivingTuesday, it is not a priority, Brooks said.
“I want to give on my own terms and on what I think is appropriate, and not on some kind of commercial day that is marketed out there,” he said.
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LAFAYETTE, Co. — Lynne Garfinkel, 55, and Pam Lowy, 58, met through a mutual friend when they both moved to Lafayette, near Boulder, Colorado, several years ago. During the height of the pandemic, they took online training on running a giving circle through the organization Philanthropy Together. Ultimately, they decided to co-lead a new group, Moving Mountains, in part to deepen their ties to the area.
The group’s members vote on a cause they want to support and then research local organizations, sometimes visiting the nonprofits and asking them questions about how they would use a donation, which ranges from $4,000 to $16,000 , depending on the cycle.
“We want a project or something where we know where our money is going to make a bigger impact,” Lowy said.
The only requirement to join the group, which uses an online platform called Grapevine to manage donations and votes, is to donate to the pooled funds. Garfinkel said they have never met some members in person.
‘They trust that the group will carry out the checks and that their money will go to a good cause. They enjoy being part of something bigger,” she said. “But they don’t have the time to do their own research, to get involved, to volunteer, and that’s OK.”
For Garfinkel, her contributions to the giving circle represent one of her most important charitable donations each year, but she said of GivingTuesday, “I still use that time to put all my income together and what did I give this year? And what was I going to give? And what do I have some room to give in this last month of the year?”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.