Those of you in the Pioneer Valley will know that Tuesday, May 2nd is Valley Gives day, an annual day of giving sponsored by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, in which people of our community support local causes they care about. If you’ve participated in Valley Gives in the past, you may know that there are quite a number of prizes offered for various achievements during the day, as well as a number of random prizes awarded for donations at various times, etc. Here, we’d like to mention a few of those, at what the best strategies are for helping some of those prizes come our way.
Strategic Giving During Valley Gives 2017
Many of the prizes offered require feats of fundraising that are really beyond our reach, so here we’ll focus on a few to which we can reasonably aspire.
Time-based prizes:
These prizes include “Power Hours” and “Golden Tickets,” which are drawn randomly based on donations made during particular time periods. The more donations made for Act Too Studio Opera Workshop during these hours, the more chances we have of winning one of these prizes. Here is a list of the times of day when your donation might make the most impact! All times are Eastern Standard Time.
Power Hour ($1000): 10:00-10:59AM; 10:00-10:59PM
Golden Tickets ($500): 7:00-7:59AM; 9:00-9:59AM; 12:00-12:59PM; 1:00-1:59PM; 3:00-3:59PM; 4:00-4:59PM; 7:00-7:59PM; 8:00-8:59PM
Donations made during these time periods will automatically enter us into a drawing for the two prizes awarded each time, so if you’re able to make a donation, no matter how small, during these hours, it could end up being a much larger gift!
Demographic and volume-based prizes:
A few other prizes we think we might have a reasonable shot at include “Most unique donors,” which awards prizes to organizations who attract the highest number of individual donors, regardless of the donation size, “Most donors under 40,” and “Most new donors to your organization,” which pretty much speak for themselves, and “Donors by decade,” which enters an organization in a pool for a prize if it has received donations from donors in at least four of the decade categorizations on the donor form (with the caveat that two must be in the 30-39, 20-29, or 19 and under categories).
The value of these prizes is that they favor organizations that receive a large volume of small donations, which means that even the smallest amount has the potential to reap much greater rewards. If you are able to donate even the smallest amount ($10 is the Valley Gives minimum), and/or encourage your friends to do so, you could help us have a more successful day than you might imagine.
Thank you for your help! We are grateful for any help you can give us during Valley Gives day this year, and we’ll be posting updates throughout the day on our Facebook Page, including new videos and stories from our teens. We hope you’ll join us!