Focus on Manatee | COVID-19 creates extraordinary times. Extraordinary givers are meeting the challenge
Our community witnessed an extraordinary online event during a 24-hour period in the final week of April. More than 58,900 donations from individuals in our community streamed into a single website during the 2020 Giving Challenge. When each of these individual gifts, starting at just $25, was added together with matching funds from The Patterson Foundation, more than $18 million was raised in unrestricted support for 687 local nonprofits in our four-county area.
Those are a lot of big numbers. Take a breath and think about them.
The Giving Challenge started in March 2012 after a group of approximately 100 charitable organizations took a leap and agreed to create detailed profiles about their operations, governance, and impact in an online knowledge base called The Giving Partner (www.thegivingpartner.org). The tool was designed by our friends at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to help donors make informed decisions about giving, knowing how many “good causes” are here.
They launched a day of giving — then 36 hours — for agencies with these profiles. The Giving Challenge was born and has grown over time, each year with more organizations able to participate.
With unemployment skyrocketing and the market fluctuating dramatically, not everyone believed this would be a big time for people to open their wallets.
What we learned is that even during a period of fear and uncertainty, people put a premium on caring for others and charitable causes. Giving is alive and well.
In March and April alone, Manatee Community Foundation awarded more than $870,500 in grants by partnering with generous people. Individual donors recommended thousands in grants to nonprofit organizations important to them—including those focused on food security, equity in education, the arts, and animal welfare. We awarded grants to organizations serving children in foster care, including crisis therapy for parents in Early Childhood Court, support for relative and non-relative caregivers, and basic needs for foster families.
Our foundation created two new charitable funds to address the coronavirus pandemic and its impact in our community, with more than $1.1 million available for grant making.
The first — the Manatee County COVID19 Community Response Fund — is focused on health and human service needs in Manatee County. To date, 23 grants have been made to organizations working in health care, food security, child care, hospice, basic needs and emergency response. With community donations incentivized by an initial $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor and $100,000 in matching support from the Manatee Matches Giving Circle, people like you have come forward with contributions from $25 to $25,000 to support the cause. Every single dollar will make a difference.
The foundation opened a second coronavirus fund with dollars and direction from the Knight Foundation. Its purpose is to ensure that people in downtown Bradenton continue to remain informed and engaged. The fund is supporting local COVID-19 reporting at The Bradenton Herald with no paywall. Without access to local knowledge about what is happening in our city, it is impossible to be an active and responsible citizen. We need local news.
Our board and staff teams continue to work diligently to understand the evolving situation and to direct charitable resources to vital nonprofits serving Manatee County where they can make the biggest impact.
Here are a few recommendations for those who would like to help through philanthropy:
Give unrestricted support for organizations you know and trust. Now is not the time to make restrictive and complicated demands of nonprofits meeting community needs.
Ask organizations what they need. It can be tempting to approach nonprofits with personal ideas of how they can be creative or innovative. This can complicate their extremely difficult work and create barriers you might not realize.
If you are contacted by groups asking for money, be sure to verify the legitimacy of the organization to avoid scams. Our team can help you, or you can search for the organization on www.TheGivingPartner.org or www.GuideStar.org.
Now is the time to review your will or estate plan. Leaving a percentage of your estate to charity is easy and flexible, whether you choose to designate specific organizations or a field of interest like children’s education, local arts, support for single women in need, or any area that is important to you.
If you need supportive services during this difficult time, our hope is that you will turn to organizations that exist to help people in your situation. This new day requires us to think and act differently. No one should let pride get in the way of accessing healthy food, rental assistance, mental health support, or utility assistance. Anyone can call 2-1-1 and will be directed to help. The Women’s Resource Center also has an excellent list of resources available on its website, www.mywrc.org.
For more information about charitable giving during COVID-19 response and recovery, contact Manatee Community Foundation at (941) 747-7765 or visit ManateeCF.org. We are here to support the individual aspirations of donors and our community.
Susie Bowie is executive director of the Manatee Community Foundation.
This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.