On Feb. 23, Fairfield County”™s Community Foundation (FCCF) will host its 10th annual Giving Day, the 24-hour virtual fundraising marathon that helps connect local nonprofits with donors eager to support their missions.
By all measurements, Giving Day has been a successful fundraising vehicle. Since 2014, the event has raised $13.75 million ”” and last year was a record-breaking feat with approximately 17,000 donations that generated more than $2 million.
This year”™s Giving Day will include the participation of nearly 400 local nonprofits ”” a complete list is on the FCGives.org website. The giving window will open on the FCGives.org website at 12 a.m. on Feb. 23 and run through 11:59 p.m. that day; a minimum donation of $10 is required.
FCCF President and CEO Mendi Blue Paca is looking to the Giving Day event with bittersweet feelings. On one hand, she is expecting another triumphant turnout by donors eager to assist local organizations. However, the FCCF has decided that this year”™s event will be the last.
“It”™s an event that has generated a lot of momentum over the years and a lot of dollars and a lot of unity and spirit,” Blue Paca told the Business Journals. “But the foundation is continually evaluating all of our initiatives and we always want to make sure that it is the best use of our limited human capital resources and financial capital, and that we”™re meeting the needs of our partners in the most timely ways.”
During this evaluation process, Blue Paca heard comments from some of the FCCF”™s partners who praised the Giving Day mission, but there were also comments from other partners who were concerned about working from “a heavy list” with hundreds of organizations vying for attention and dollars. Blue Paca admitted that “maybe the ROI wasn”™t super great for them,” and a review process was undertaken to determine how the wider nonprofit environment within Fairfield County felt about the event.
“We didn”™t want to base it on year-end surveys and anecdotal pieces of information,” she said, noting the FCCF conducted multiple focus groups over a two-year period that concluded at the end of 2022.
“We also surveyed about 700 organizations that participated in Giving Day over the years,” she continued. “And the real sentiment, overwhelmingly, even for those who raised money, was that the ROI really was very limited. For the organizations, very few were raising more than $5,000. And then when they were coupling that with the amount of investment to really ramp up the infrastructure to participate, it wasn”™t high.”
Blue Paca also observed that the fundraising landscape had evolved since 2014 ”” at that time, online fundraising was still something of a novelty. The Covid-19 pandemic created the considerations that were not present when Giving Day launched.
Moving forward, Giving Day will not be replaced with a specific event ”” instead, FCCF will realign its focus to meet the ongoing needs of the local nonprofit environment. Blue Paca pointed to the FCCF”™s new strategic plan, titled “Fairfield County Forward,” as the cornerstone of its strategy and emphasized the responsive programming of its Center for Nonprofit Excellence to assist organizations that need operational aid.
“We are also scaling up our support for leaders of color and grassroots organizations,” she said. “Those tend to be the organizations that still don”™t have necessarily the type of fundraising infrastructure that that one might need. If you were to think of the organizations that most would benefit from our funding support, it would be in those categories. So, we are going to be launching a very targeted support capacity building program for those leaders that will go a lot deeper.”
As for the last go-round of Giving Day, Blue Paca is hoping the annual event will close on a high note.
“I would love to see this be the greatest Giving Day we”™ve had yet because it has been an awesome 10-year run,” she said. “There will be a kickoff event at Norwalk Art Space the morning of Giving Day, and we are hoping to bring together all the partners that have been a part of this 10-year journey to celebrate all that we”™ve accomplished collectively as a community. It is our goal and our hope that that folks will register one last time and join us in surpassing our recent Giving Day totals.”
