#YSGivingTuesday committee members, from left, Kathryn Hitchcock, Jeannamarie Cox, Dawn Boyer and Ara Beal, organized the village’s second year of participation in the charitable giving campaign that falls on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. While the initiative is focused on online giving, the local effort also accepted in-person donations during the day,Tuesday, Nov. 28, at the Yellow Springs Senior Center. (Photo by Carol Simmons)
2017 #YSGivingTuesday donations on track to top last year
- Published: December 8, 2017
The numbers are still coming in, but with 19 of 24 participating local nonprofit groups reporting their 2017 #YSGivingTuesday results, the money raised during the 24-hour charitable event Nov. 28 stands at $64,279, according to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation, which oversees the donations.
The local campaign, in its second year, is part of a global #GivingTuesday movement founded in 2012 to counter the consumer-driven commercialism of so-called Black Friday and Cyber Monday that immediately follow Thanksgiving. Set the Tuesday after the Thanksgiving Day weekend, the giving campaign is primarily an online effort that utilizes social media to solicit donations.
In its first outing last year, the Yellow Springs effort raised $64,918. A matching grant from the Community Foundation put the 2016 total at nearly $75,000.
With five organizations yet to report their results, and another $10,000 Community Foundation grant, the 2017 campaign is on track to top last year’s total.
“The [local planning] committee is very pleased with the results,” Jeannamarie Cox, the executive director of the Community Foundation and a #YSGivingTuesday planning committee member, wrote in an email this week.
Cox wrote that the local website developed to accept donations for each of the participating Yellow Springs groups — http://www.ysgivingtuesday.org — logged 188 individual donors who made a total of 650 organizational gifts. The largest donation was $2,400, and the smallest, $2, according to Cox. The average online donation amount was $182, Cox wrote.
In addition, 25 in-person donations came into the #YSGivingTuesday “headquarters,” at the Senior Center during the day Nov. 28. “And many people stopped in to say hi and encourage us on,” Cox wrote.
Although this year’s campaign is ended, the website’s donation page will remain available throughout the year for community members to continue to contribute to local causes and groups, Cox added.
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