If you haven’t heard, we recently announced big news for ArkansasGives. The third and final day of giving will be April 6, 2017. We’re excited to see the generosity of Arkansans exceed our expectations, yet again!
Since we’ve heard questions about why 2017 will be the last year, we wanted to take some time to explain why the Community Foundation made this decision.
Arkansas Community Foundation works to meet community needs by making grants and sharing knowledge. We support programs that work and we partner to create new initiatives that address the gaps. ArkansasGives is one way we support programs across the state and partner with nonprofits in the valuable work they’re doing. Thanks to the generosity of thousands who wish to do the same, over six MILLION dollars has been deployed to support programs that are working to address the needs in Arkansas. That’s amazing!
We know that Arkansans are generous. By sponsoring a vehicle to help nonprofits tell their story and raise money in a simple but effective way, we believed ArkansasGives could help build the nonprofit sector and its capacity to continue making change happen.
As we began planning ArkansasGives, we set some big goals for the event:
- We wanted to get people excited about giving to nonprofits at a time other than the traditional year-end.
- We believed that expanding nonprofits’ capacities for marketing and fundraising would help them take full advantage of social media and online giving to achieve their missions
- We wanted to help increase awareness of the impact of nonprofits and their programs statewide.
From the beginning, ArkansasGives was not designed as an ongoing annual event. We believe that after this third event, ArkansasGives has run its course. You may ask why stop a good thing? We believe that all of goals will be met after this third year, and that nonprofits will have the tools they need to continue the good channeled by ArkansasGives.
There are so many stories of impact. As you browse the list of top money raisers and those who had the most numbers of donations from 2015 and 2016, you’ll see nonprofits of all sizes that raised funds for programs or initiatives impacting their local communities in critical ways. Behind those dollars are individuals who have a passion to support the wonderful things that are happening in the nonprofit sector in our state.
The Community Foundation is excited to think about what will follow. Before ArkansasGives, some of our initiatives included Write for Arkansas, Aspire Arkansas and the Stop Hunger initiative. We can’t wait to unveil what’s next!
What do you think 2017 will bring? Stay tuned for when we announce our BIG goal in February. Help us spread the word that nonprofits can start signing up Oct. 1!