Donors step up to support Give!Local in record numbers

A TIME TO GIVE: Lisa Watters, front office and listings coordinator for Xpress, headed the 2024 Give!Local campaign. Xpress photo

It was a big year for Give!Local.

The annual campaign, launched by Mountain Xpress in 2015, raised more than $337,000 — plus more than $112,000 in matching grants — for 52 area nonprofits in 2024. That represented a $44,000 increase over 2023 and included a one-day record of $56,000 in donations on the final day of the campaign. Give!Local also received a record number of individual donations.

Lisa Watters, who coordinated the 2024 campaign for Xpress, believes donors stepped up in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene, which highlighted the vital work being done by nonprofits. She notes a similar spike was seen in the 2020 campaign, in the wake of COVID-19.

“I think both the 2020 and 2024 campaigns show that when the going gets tough, our community not only steps up as a whole but that those who are able give even more,” says Watters.

As coordinator of the campaign, Watters works with all the nonprofits to get an authorization letter from the president of their board of directors, a participation fee and materials to feature in the Give!Local print guide and online platform.

Below, Xpress speaks with Watters about how Give!Local works, the impact Helene had on the campaign and why it is important for Western North Carolina.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Xpress: For those who aren’t familiar with Give!Local, can you briefly explains how it works? 

Give!Local is a campaign that raises funds for dozens of local nonprofits by creating an easy, fun and rewarding way for folks to donate. It does this by offering a one-stop online platform with a shopping cart that allows donors to direct a single gift, whether for $5 or thousands of dollars, to just one or many Give!Local nonprofits. In the process donors can increase their donation if they give to a nonprofit with a matching grant as well as garner “goodies” such as gift certificates, merchandise, entry into drawings and more.

Before the platform goes live each Nov. 1, a printed Give!Local Guide comes out in the last October issue of Mountain Xpress. The guide, as well as the platform, highlights each participating nonprofit — their mission and the work they do in the community — as well as any matching grants and any fun incentives they might offer. Donors also have the option of filling out a paper form and sending that in with a check if they prefer. The campaign officially ends at midnight each Dec. 31.

How are the charities chosen? 

The nonprofits are selected by a committee based on a variety of criteria. The nonprofits have to be 100% locally based. For example, we don’t accept applications from local offices of national charities. Each charity that applies has to present a plan of action to optimize the Give!Local campaign through their own efforts — for example, via social media outreach and networking endeavors. We also try to maintain a balance of diversity in organization size, scope and category. We look at past enthusiasm and results for nonprofits reapplying to be part of the campaign and reserve space for new and small nonprofits to participate.

What is your role? 

My role this year was as campaign coordinator. Being the coordinator basically means juggling and keeping track of lots of different kinds of information as well as being the liaison between the nonprofits and the editorial and design departments at Xpress.

Once the print guide went to the printers on Oct. 10, I didn’t have much to do until the campaign officially started on Nov. 1. At that point my job was to keep track of any donations that qualified for matching grant monies and to update the matching amounts online — lots of spreadsheets were involved.

Now I’m working on creating a spreadsheet for each of the nonprofits that shows who donated, how much they donated and their contact information. In the process, I’ll pull out the names and contact information of anyone who requested to remain anonymous.

How did Tropical Storm Helene affect your approach to Give!Local this year?

To be honest, we didn’t have a lot of time to change our approach. Just a day before Helene hit, we had sent out the last of the final proofs to be approved. After Helene, of course, it took days for us to get our own systems back online before we could even begin reaching back out to the nonprofits, many of which were offline themselves. Add to that the fact that the official deadline to send the final proof of the guide to the printers was Oct. 4, the first Friday after the storm, and you can imagine how much we were scrambling. Fortunately, we were able to get a week’s extension from our printers, but even with that we were still unable to contact quite a few nonprofits and just had to go with what we already had.

For about a day or so, we did entertain the idea of allowing the nonprofits to send in updates on the impact Helene was having on their organizations and to incorporate that into their profiles, but as those updates began coming in, we realized we just didn’t have the time or manpower to implement them. Also, we knew it wouldn’t be fair to the nonprofits unable to reach us with updates precisely because of how how much Helene had affected them.

However, we were able to adapt in two significant ways. First, we updated our own editorial content in the guide to reflect Helene’s impact on our community and to ask our readers who were in a position to help to join forces and dig deep. Additionally, our lead graphic designer, Scott Southwick, came up with an alternative cover different than the one originally planned, one that powerfully reflected Helene’s impact on our community: a wet and bedraggled dog and young woman sitting in the bed of a truck after being rescued from a nearby river.

Why is Give! Local important to the WNC community?

It’s important in so many ways. I think a lot of people want to contribute to the larger community but don’t always know how. The Give!Local campaign not only highlights dozens of different nonprofits and the work they’re doing in the community but also makes it easy to donate to one or more of them. Additionally, it not only raises much-needed funds for each individual nonprofit but also provides greater exposure to what they’re all about and the work they do. Finally, I think it’s a way for all of us to connect: Those who donate are contributing to needs in the community they feel strongly about, local businesses are contributing by donating services and goods for incentives, and the nonprofits hopefully feel more supported and recognized for the work they do.

Looking ahead, do your foresee any new opportunities or challenges in 2025?

Except for 2022, when the amount the campaign raised remained static, Give!Local has progressively grown each year in the total amount raised for the nonprofits. Of course, we hope to continue this upward trend, but at the same time we don’t want to lose sight of the campaign’s ability to effectively fundraise for each participating nonprofit. This means we probably won’t add to the number of nonprofits, as that would dilute the impact for each one. We also want to find new outreach models to raise awareness of the campaign and do what we can on our side to make each year as successful as possible.

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About Justin McGuire
Justin McGuire is a UNC Chapel Hill graduate with more than 30 years of experience as a writer and editor. His work has appeared in The Sporting News, the (Rock Hill, SC) Herald and various other publications. Follow me @jmcguireMLB

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