Remember last year when North Texas Giving Day became the area’s tsunami for fundraising? Ah, sure you do. First the response was so overwhelming that it shut down the website. Then the phone bank was decimated. It got to a point where the organizers had to extend the deadline for participation. The team answering the phones was hardly able to take time for powder room breaks.
The results? Over 600 nonprofits received funds thanks to 13,500 donations.
When asked to what they attributed last year’s slam, Communities Foundation of Texas Chief Philanthropy Officer Sarah Nelson didn’t hesitate answering, “Social media and a generous community.”
Don’t you just love it when generosity is powerful?
In preparation for this year’s big day on Thursday, September 13, CFT and the Center for Nonprofit Management have done their homework and think they’ve locked everything down including:
- hours being extended to be nearly round-the-clock, from 7 a.m. to midnight
- the hiring of a new software provider that was certified by GuideStar to handle the same transaction volumes as iTunes–which is to say, 90,000 donations per hour
- CFT’s welcoming the community to make in-person donations. They’ll even have food trucks on-site 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 6 p.m.
- not only having $1 million in challenge funds and prizes for donations $25 and above, but expanding this year’s prize categories to also include “Golden Tickets” where a new winner is randomly drawn hourly from a pool of those that received donations in that hour. These perks have been provided by CFTexas, Community Foundation of North Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Lyda Hill, Hoblitzelle Foundation, Hunt Consolidated’s Hunt Cares Campaign, Meadows Foundation, Harold Simmons Foundation and an anonymous donor.
The MSC elves took off their West Nile designer gas masks and admitted that it sounded like CFT and CNM really had everything covered. But being naughty creatures, the elves took it as a challenge and giggled that they would love to see the North Texas community blast the North Texas Giving Day operation and just see if they can’t once again overwhelm the lines with generosity.