OT: May 3rd - Pittsburgh Day of Giving.....

[pitt-girl]

We take advantage of this program to make annual donations to all our favorite non-profits. This year's format is different than the past, but the net is your donation is matched. It's a nice way to make sure your charities maximize their donations.

https://givingday.pittsburghgives.org

 

[burnie1105]

It's interesting to see how many organizations created matching pools. I work in development, and we opted not to participate because we don't have the time/manpower to make it worthwhile (plus we didn't want to cannibalize any of our major donors with non-guaranteed funds). I get what they are trying to do, but for organizations with small development departments/databases (which is the grand majority of NPOs in the city), the year's set-up is incredibly burdensome.

 

[pitt-girl]

It's interesting to see how many organizations created matching pools. I work in development, and we opted not to participate because we don't have the time/manpower to make it worthwhile (plus we didn't want to cannibalize any of our major donors with non-guaranteed funds). I get what they are trying to do, but for organizations with small development departments/databases (which is the grand majority of NPOs in the city), the year's set-up is incredibly burdensome.

I'm curious why they felt the need to change the format.

 

[burnie1105]

The primary reason would be money. If I recall correctly, the matching pool was at one point over $1 million, then it began to decline. TPF likely doesn't have the institutional willpower to keep spending at that level, and if they kept decreasing the pool, it eventually wouldn't be worth the hassle (the last time TPF did the match pool, the final match was 13 cents on the dollar). The second, and somewhat more cynical reason, is publicity. The Day of Giving was originally meant to drive business/interest to TPF, so once they milked as much publicity from it as they could, it became an afterthought.

I don't doubt that they genuinely hope the new format drives giving/exposure for a lot of organizations, but the cold reality is that if they truly wanted to maximize the day's impact, they wouldn't have changed the format.