Arizona Gives Day is a 24-hour online campaign created to unite people throughout Arizona in the spirit of giving. On Tuesday, April 5, thousands of Arizonans visited azgives.org to make financial donations to the nonprofit organizations and causes that matter most to them. In this single day of giving, people from Page to Nogales and from Lake Havasu City to Fort Defiance, opened their wallets to show their support for the work of Arizona’s nonprofit community.
Hopes were high heading into this year’s Arizona Gives Day, as hundreds of new organizations had signed up, inspired by the success of last year’s event which raised more than $2,000,000 in one day. At the Alliance of Arizona Nonprofits offices, our staff spent the entire day taking calls, responding to emails, and watching the results roll in live on a huge projection screen. The day started out strong, with more than $300,000 of pre-scheduled donations kick-starting the numbers in the wee hours of the morning. By 10:45 a.m., a major milestone was reached, and a cheer went out, as the counter crossed the $1,000,000 mark.
The excitement of friendly competition among the participating nonprofits continued to push that number higher throughout the day as they vied for a portion of the $175,000 in bonus prize money up for grabs to those nonprofits that raised the most money in a variety of categories.
By the time it was all said and done, just after midnight, as we took down the big screen and turned out the lights, Arizonans had donated at an astonishing rate of $30 per SECOND, every minute of every hour of the day, to raise a record-breaking $2,600,000 for Arizona’s nonprofits.
