Give Day Tampa Bay is upon us. In fact, it’s the most literal day you can imagine. It started at 12:01am this morning and ends at 11:59pm tonight. In fact, the website givedaytampabay.org has a running clock. As of this post, $326,493.50 has been contributed.Give Day Tampa Bay was birthed out of a response to a study in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. According to statistics, Tampa/St. Pete is among America’s top metro areas but, sadly, falls short in how much it gives back to community programs.
So in order to rectify this, Give Day Tampa was formed in coalition with the Florida Next Foundation, the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay (as well as a very impassioned bay area resident E. Tyler Cathey) and bing-bang-boom Give Day was born. 384 nonprofits in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando Counties from the arts, schools, museums, food banks and more are participating in this first-of-its-kind effort in the Tampa Bay region, according to Give Day headquarters, located in the Tampa Bay WaVE Venture Center in downtown Tampa, where volunteers and the public are working phones and coordinating activities while a giant flat screen TV leaderboard tracks incoming donations in real time.
Donations start at $25, Give Day has 385 non-profit programs that suit every type of interest. The categories include:
-Animal
-Community Improvement
-Environment
-Human Services
-Arts and Culture
-Education
-Health
-Youth Development
If you would like to donate, you can visit the website to peruse the organizations accepting profits (the site also features a handy-dandy search button in case you want to know if a particular program is enrolled). All donations are tax-deductible and donors are allowed the option of giving their donations as a gift or remaining anonymous.
So come on Tampa Bay! Show the Chronicle of Philanthropy that we are really worth chronicling and donate today!