This Lowcountry Giving Day, we are celebrating more engagement than ever before. Nearly 20,000 gifts were made to support the 387 nonprofits participating in Lowcountry Giving Day 2016. For the first time in its three-year history, any nonprofit serving our 9-county service area could participate in Lowcountry Giving Day.
As you are well aware, the day was not without its challenges. In our region, like many others around the country, we experienced technical problems that slowed our progress on the day. Many donors and nonprofit partners have expressed frustration with the problems that occurred on Lowcountry Giving Day and I want you to know we have heard you loud and clear.
As Lowcountry Giving Day’s primary sponsor and champion, we feel a sense of personal responsibility for the challenges of the day. It is our goal to understand exactly what happened and how to improve for the future.
Despite its challenges, I want to put the outcomes of Lowcountry Giving Day in perspective to show how generous our community’s giving day effort truly was.
This year, approximately $4.2 million was raised, with $1.1 million coming in via pre-giving day incentive gifts that nonprofits were responsible for raising on their own, a departure from years past. Last year’s total was nearly $6.8 million with more than $2.7 million raised in pre-giving day incentives.
To put these results in context, over the past three years, Lowcountry Giving Day has raised $15 million for close to 447 nonprofits across all nine counties of our service area and compared to other areas in the country we did pretty well.
Our community is a benevolent one, and we should applaud the generosity demonstrated not just on giving days, but every day of the year in the Lowcountry.
Our plan moving forward is to release a feedback survey to all nonprofits who participated in Lowcountry Giving Day to gain feedback and insight on the day. The survey will be followed up by a series of in-person listening sessions. The goal is to meet with both donors and nonprofits and hear about their experiences firsthand. Our technical partner, Bidr, is also committed to being a part of these listening sessions to learn how to improve their platform and processes as well. We will complete these meetings by May 20th.
In the end, execution of Lowcountry Giving Day was less than perfect and for that, we apologize. We do, however, recognize and celebrate the great impact that the $4.2 million raised on Lowcountry Giving Day will have on our region.
Thank you to your commitment to our community.
Darrin Goss, Sr.
President and CEO, Coastal Community Foundation
We invite feedback on Lowcountry Giving Day at <a href=”mailto:givingday@coastalcommunityfoundation click this link now.org” target=”_blank”>givingday@coastalcommunityfoundation.org or our upcoming listening sessions – RSVP here.
