Our Fundraising Search Challenges YOU (and Your Nonprofit) to THE MOST CREATIVE National Philanthropy Day Yet!

Being celebrated this year on October 29, in true 2020 style, National Philanthropy Day (NPD) will look a lot different than many of us are used to.  Do you know what falls only two days later and will also look a lot different this year for our youngest philanthropists?  You guessed it, Halloween.  

Virtual NPD celebrations cancelled or modified neighborhood trick-or-treating.  What many might see as “losses” in a year of so many unknowns, Our Fundraising Search sees as an opportunity to exercise our creative philanthropic spirits to celebrate NPD in a new way this October… and to give those young philanthropists something to look forward to.  

Here is the Challenge: Between October 29-31, what can you and your nonprofit do to introduce philanthropy to children in your circle of influence this year?  Be as creative as you can and share your ideas with us!  

Our Fundraising Search will be interviewed by the AJC Decatur Book Festival on Crowdcast on October 29, at 4:30 pm. We will be talking about how anyone can do philanthropy!  For example, Haygood United Methodist Church is asking community members to place canned goods on their front porches and the children/members will be collecting them for donation to Intown Collaborative Ministries (www.intowncm.org).  Haygood UMC will be distributing through their food pantry to our neighbors in need because it is “Scary to be Hungry.”  North Cobb Christian School will be organizing their own “Philanthropy In the Classroom” event and asking students to write thank you notes to donors.  How will you participate?  

Some simple ideas to get you started: 

1. Personally share with the children or grandchildren in your life what philanthropy means to you and what nonprofits you support and why.  
2. Invite the children in your neighborhood to participate in simple “piggybank givebacks” with the nonprofit recipient a “local hero” organization. 
3. As a nonprofit, organize a virtual story time for your members and donors with children/grandchildren and share a story about philanthropy.  
4. If you work in a school, organize your own Philanthropy In The Classroom program and speak to elementary classes about what philanthropy is and how they too can be philanthropists.  
5. Gift donors with a children’s specific teaching resource about philanthropy and ask them to share it with the children in their lives or donate to a local school or library.  

Need a resource to read or give out?  Check out “The Adventures of PhilAnThropy” written by Our Fundraising Search’s Linda Wise McNay, PhD and Ailena Gibby Parramore along with fellow fundraising enthusiast Del Martin, illustrations by Mason McNay.