Organizers said nonprofits that used social media aggressively often received more donations.
Valley Gives Day helped almost 270 nonprofit organizations in the Pioneer Valley raise money for necessary projects, due largely in part to the use of social media.
The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, sponsor of Valley Gives Day, provided social media training to nonprofits as a requirement for their participation.
“Online giving has been doing really well this year. People want to make a difference that way,” said Kristin Leutz, Vice President of Philanthropic Services for the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.
Fundraising totaled nearly $1 million on Valley Gives Day alone. Previously, $200,000 had been raised for nonprofits participating in Valley Gives Day, making a total of almost $1.2 million that was distributed to nonprofits.
Motherwoman, a Hadley-based nonprofit aimed at providing support to mothers and families across the Pioneer Valley, came in fifth place in the “Small nonprofit, dollars raised” category. “We will use (the money) to provide more support groups for diverse mothers, and we will use it to provide scholarships for low-income women and professionals who work in nonprofits,” said Motherwoman Executive Director Beth Spong.
Motherwoman will also use the money raised during Valley Gives Day to continue its work to build coalitions of medical, mental health and social service providers who serve mothers and families in each county. Spong said Motherwoman will also continue advocating for support of policies that help families, like earned paid sick time.
Nonprofits such as Motherwoman relied heavily on the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness and fundraising efforts.
Still, some people would rather give in person than online.
The Easthampton Community Center, which has a food pantry as well as community dinners, received $2,200 in total donations on Valley Gives Day, but received only $1,185 online. The rest were made through people stopping by and handing in their checks in person.
“I think some people still are getting used to donating online. We did encounter that yesterday, that’s why we had mobile teams onsite, even just to help people navigate how to put something into a web form and make a donation that way,” said Leutz. “People still like to see the recipient of the gift.”
Regardless of how the donation was made, the Easthampton Community Center is grateful for the support.
“We have an emergency food pantry that serves 670 families in the Greater Easthampton area. We also have dinners that feed anyone in the community for free. Right now we want to make sure everyone has food for the holidays,” said Robin Bialecki, Executive Director of the Easthampton Community Center.
The hard work of the nonprofits, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and all others involved helped surpass initial goals for Valley Gives Day. The success of similar fundraising days around the nation was an inspiration to the Pioneer Valley.
“We had looked at what other communities were doing, and those were much bigger than we are. They were doing a couple million in the first year. We thought if we could just do one million this year, that would be huge,” said Valley Gives Day supporter Paul Doherty.
Organizers were impressed with the strong numbers, but some were not surprised.
“We knew this valley was incredibly generous, and yesterday was just a demonstration of what we already knew, that people would rally around causes they believe in and make their lives better,” said Katie Allan Zobel, Vice President of Philanthropic Services at the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.
Organizers said nonprofits that put in more effort on social media strategies were often more successful with fundraising during Valley Gives Day.
“We started intentionally posting at the peak times of Facebook activity, morning, lunchtime and 7:30 to 9 at night. We also know that new mothers and fathers are up in the middle of the night, and we were very surprised when we got a lot of responses to our posts in the middle of the night,” said Spong of Motherwoman.
Spong said Motherwoman's official Twitter account had been tweeting about Valley Gives Day for the past two weeks.
For next year, organizers said they hope they can raise the bar in every respect, including better and more social media training to nonprofits.