GivingTuesday: 3 Reston Nonprofits That Could Use Your Help

RESTON, VA — If you’re like many Restonians, 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.

You likely have your own favorite causes among the nonprofits, community and grassroots groups and mutual aid organizations that address local needs here in Reston.

GivingTuesday is locally led in more than 240 U.S. communities, networks and coalitions. GivingTuesday communities include the United Way of the National Capital Area.

Some worthy causes here in Reston include:

• Cathy Hudgins Community Center at Southgate: The Southgate Advisory Council’s mission of increasing programming at the Center and also furthering the Reston community’s awareness of and engagement with the Center.
• 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Meal Drive 2022: RestonStrong has identified 100 families in Reston who are food insecure. The group has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to provide these families with a hot meat from the local Harris Teeter store.
• Cornerstones: For 50 years, Cornerstones has provided support and advocacy for those in need of food, shelter, affordable housing, quality childcare, and other human service for those living in Northwestern Fairfax County.

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

Don't see your Reston charity on our list? Submit information about your favorite charity to Reston editor Michael O'Connell at michael.oconnell@patch.com.

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.

The key takeaway for charities is to stay in contact with donors and include them in fundraising pitches, regardless of when they last gave, Gusdorf said.

The report “underlines the importance of employing targeted strategies for retaining this key donor segment, especially in times of economic volatility, when donors are more frequently evaluating their financial commitments,” she said.

GivingTuesday was created in New York City in 2012 with a simple goal: to encourage people to do good. Over the past nine years, the idea has grown into the global movement it is today.

The goal of GivingTuesday is “radical generosity” — the concept that the suffering of others should be as intolerable to us as our own suffering, according to the movement’s website.