Mayor Jim Gray joined officials from the Blue Grass Community Foundation, Smiley Pete Publishing, and representatives of dozens of Central Kentucky nonprofit groups at the Fifth Third Pavilion in downtown Lexington to kick off the seventh year of the GoodGiving Challenge.
The online fundraising campaign, which will run this year from November 28 through December 31, has raised more than $7 million for local and regional nonprofit organizations since 2011. It is administered by the Blue Grass Community Foundation, in partnership with Smiley Pete Publishing, which produces Business Lexington, Chevy Chaser and Southsider magazines.
Last year’s campaign raised more than $1.6 million to support 118 nonprofits in central Kentucky and Appalachia, said Lisa Adkins, BGCF president and CEO. This year, the organization has set its sights on topping that amount.
“This is the GoodGiving Challenge in a good, giving city,” Mayor Gray said. “With a big goal of more than $1.6 million, this is the seventh year, and that already represents an astonishing, amazing success.”
For many of the nonprofit groups involved, the GoodGiving Challenge represents their biggest online fundraising effort of the year.
“This is huge for us,” said Jeffrey White, executive director of the Nest. “We are so grateful, because we do survive on the kindness of the community.”
The Nest, which offers education, counseling and support for children and families in crisis, serves roughly 4,200 people per year in the downtown Lexington area, White said, and GoodGiving is the group's main fundraiser during the holiday season. Last year the organization raised roughly $25,000 during the campaign, and the Nest hopes to increase its GoodGiving donations to $30,000 this year, White said.
Newton’s Attic, which offers innovative science and engineering learning opportunities for Central Kentucky youth, has participated in the GoodGiving Challenge for three years, said Dawn Cloyd, Newton’s Attic’s director of community outreach. In that time, the group has grown its endowment to $35,000, in large part through prize money awarded for meeting challenge goals, such as signing on the greatest number of unique donors.
Cloyd said Newton’s Attic will be looking to fund the construction of a new building at their location off Versailles Road in the future, and the GoodGiving campaign helps the group to raise needed funds for building new infrastructure and adding course content. Cloyd said the organization is hoping to raise $10,000 in donations and add $5,000 to its endowment through the Challenge.
“It makes a lot of sense, especially for smaller organizations, to be able to leverage a larger campaign like this,” Cloyd said. “It’s also helping us learn how to fundraise and how to focus on our social media.”
The GoodGiving Challenge encourages philanthropic giving in Central Kentucky by making the experience “simple, effective and rewarding,” said Adkins.
“Part of our mission is to build a stronger culture of giving and to make giving a more integrated part of our everyday lives,” Adkins said. “We want it to be something that’s easy for people to do.”
For more information about the annual GoodGiving Challenge, or to learn more about the participating nonprofits and donate, visit the website bggives.org.