Dear Colleagues,
I am thrilled to report that we raised over $196,000 for UC ANR programs on GivingTuesday this year – a 49% increase over the $130K raised during GivingTuesday last year! Given the widespread opinion that giving was likely to be down this year, this result is both inspiring and an affirmation of the support that our programs enjoy.
The 2020 GivingTuesday total breaks records for our previous giving-day campaigns. UC ANR received 854 gifts from 736 donors this year; in 2019, 494 donors gave 580 gifts. Many thanks to all of you who worked to get the word out and gave your time and money to make the campaign so successful. My goal for next year is to see a much larger percentage of our UC ANR colleagues participating in this, and other funds development activities. It is increasingly clear that our constituents want to support our work, we simply need to ask for their support and make it easy for them to do so.
Talk about making it easier: The Development Team did an exceptionally awesome job this past few months. The donation platform we used last year for GivingTuesday expired on Nov. 30 so the team had to find a new platform and quickly rebuild the site so it would be ready to accept donations on Dec. 1. They pulled off this Herculean task with flying colors!
I want to thank Emily Delk, director of annual giving and donor stewardship, for organizing the campaign and creating the materials to publicize it. She designed the #PushPlayCA theme to demonstrate how UC ANR programs have had to pivot and find new ways to move forward while many activities are paused to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
More details and stats for individual counties and programs will be available in the days ahead.
The resounding success of GivingTuesday shows that more and more people are beginning to recognize and appreciate the amazing work you do to make life better for Californians.
Glenda Humiston
Vice President