GivingTuesday: Falls Church Nonprofits That Could Use Your Help

FALLS CHURCH, VA — If you’re like many Virginians, you’ll spend many of the last few days of November immersed in consumerism, buying this and that for your friends and family, and even indulging yourself. GivingTuesday on Nov. 29 is a chance to turn your attention to local nonprofit groups seeing an alarming decline in small gifts.

Since 2012, nonprofits, community and grassroots groups, and mutual aid networks worldwide have used GivingTuesday to galvanize fundraising, rally volunteers and add momentum to their causes.

Local nonprofits are having a particularly tough time this year. The number of donors shrunk by 7 percent in the first half of 2022, largely due to a “collapse” in the number of small-gift supporters, according to the most recent GivingTuesday quarterly fundraising report.

Donors giving $100 or less were down 17 percent in the first six months of the year, and 8 percent fewer donors made gifts of $101 to $500, according to the report.

GivingTuesday is locally led in more than 240 U.S. communities, networks and coalitions, including Giving Local Together in the DC region. You likely have your own favorite causes among the nonprofits, community and grassroots groups and mutual aid organizations that address local needs here in Falls Church.

Some worthy causes to support directly in Falls Church include:

• Falls Church Homeless Shelter: A nonprofit addressing the need for emergency housing, particularly during the winter months.
• Homestretch: A nonprofit helping homeless families get back on their feet and into permanent, sustainable housing.
• Falls Church Education Foundation: A nonprofit raising funds for Falls Church City Public Schools
• Falls Church Arts: This nonprofit supports the visual arts through exhibitions, education and more.
• VFW Post 9274 - Falls Church: This VFW post works to serve and advocate on behalf of veterans and support the local community.
• Creative Cauldron: This nonprofit arts organization offers learning and participation in the performing and visual arts for children and adults.
• Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation: The foundation works to preserve early civil rights history of Falls Church and the vicinity.
• Falls Church McLean Children's Center: The Children's Center emphasizes the well-being of the whole child. The center helps children build the skills that they need for success in school and in life.

See other nonprofits to support from the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce.

There are some bright spots in the GivingTuesday fundraising report, released by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, a research effort of the Association of Fundraising Professionals Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday.

Importantly, although the pool of donors shrunk in the first half of 2022, the dollars contributed increased 6.2 percent as major donors stepped up. At the same time, the increase in large donor contributions was outpaced by second-quarter inflation rate of about 8.5 percent.

“Recaptured donors” — people who at one point had given to an organization, but not in the most recent reporting period — grew by 6.3 percent.

That group likely includes people who supported a charity in a surge of pandemic giving in 2020, as well as those who paused their charitable donations during the first two years of the pandemic and gave again this year, according to Lori Gusdorf, executive vice president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals group, said in a news release.