Today, Tuesday, December 3, is #GivingTuesday. (If you are reading this via our email updates, you wont get this until Wednesday – but keep reading – all of the information is still relevant).
I have been thinking about GivingTuesday for the past week. The blog The Motherhood (which happens to be based in Pittsburgh) had a post last week about the 12 days of giving leading up to GivingTuesday.
This is the 2nd annual #GivingTuesday – the idea is to have a national day that promotes giving as a follow up to Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While GivingTuesday hasn’t quite yet gained the popularity of CyberMonday, I think it is an idea worth sharing.
There were lots of great posts today from around the web related to giving –
- NPR has a story on giving and avoiding scams.
- Beth Kanter who writes one of the best blogs about technology and nonprofits wrote about supporting NTEN
- The Causemopolitain, which is a blog by Pittsburgh native Sloane Davidson, used GivingTuesday to launch The Giving Manifesto
The Giving Manifesto by @Sloane
Take a moment to check out Sloane’s new site Galore.cc and download The Giving Manifesto – for a limited time you can use the code giving for a free download.
Sloane’s blog post, and her new project The Giving Manifesto, is what inspired me to finally launch something that I have been thinking about for a few months – sharing more great information about Pittsburgh non-profits.
With just 3 short weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, I have been thinking about all of the things that I want to finish before the end of 2013 and went to revisit my new years resolution post from last January. I’ve been slacking on a few of these. While I’d say civic engagement has been much better for 2013. I haven’t started a book club, I’m way behind on profiling 100 local blogs. Over the summer I was thinking about how to best write about more Pittsburgh nonprofits. I think the best way to learn about local nonprofits is from you – I would like to hear why a particular organization is important to you.
Your 3 Favorite Nonprofits
So, today I’m finally kicking off a new series of blog posts – Your 3 Favorite Nonprofits. I am inviting YOU to share three of your favorite nonprofit organizations with the readers of IheartPGH. You can use this form to submit your list. I hope this will become a weekly feature and a great way to introduce more people to the great work that nonprofits are doing in our communities.
Since someone has to go first…here is what I submitted for my 3 favorite Nonprofits:
Meet Lindsay Patross
You can follow Lindsay on Twitter @Bloglocally, @IheartPGH and @smRTup
lindsay ‘s favorite thing about Pittsburgh is… the people who love this city
Venture Outdoors
Venture Outdoors runs one of my favorite things in Pittsburgh – Kayak Pittsburgh and offers lots of programing to help more Pittsburghers learn to love the outdoors.
CHS – Community Human Services
CHS is doing amazing work to prevent homelessness in Pittsburgh and everyone who works at CHS only has great things to say about the organization.
New Organizing Institute
This one isn’t based in Pittsburgh, but is an important organization and has a great tip-of-the-day blog about using technology to build communities online and offline.
What is the best way to get involved?
Right now – everyone can help support the CHS holiday gift project by making a donation online – http://www.crowdrise.com/CHSHolidayGiftProject2013/fundraiser/iheartpgh
Want to learn more about Giving Tuesday? Check out some of these blog posts…
- Giving Tuesday: My favorite nonprofits (fromhousepartiestohousewife.com)
- Sunlight Foundation: Remember Sunlight this #GivingTuesday (sunlightfoundation.com)
- Give the Gift of Giving this #GivingTuesday (linkedin.com)
- Giving Tuesday encourages philanthropy during the holiday season (consumerreports.org)
- Dear nonprofits: Giving Tuesday is a sign you could be better at the Internet (venturebeat.com)
