Nonprofits put the UNITY in Community
I have long said that each of us live our lives in nonprofits — whether taking our kids to play in a local park, enjoying a date night at a local play, benefiting from a local nonprofit hospital, or adopting a beloved pet. Nonprofits enhance our lives and our communities, providing a quality of life that attracts residents and businesses.
One often-overlooked aspect of nonprofits is their unifying effect on the community. Nonprofits exist to make things better and serve as a primary way for citizens to gather around a common cause. Inherently, we know that we need to work together to create and preserve community assets like parks and greenspace, local heritage sites, and environmental and cultural treasures. We know that we must all work together to support local hospitals, clinics providing medical care to those in need, research into chronic and rare diseases, and compassionate care for the elderly, disabled, and hospice-bound, because we all benefit from them.
We understand that solutions to problems that are incredibly complex — like affordable housing, environmental issues, and preparing the workforce of the future — require ideas and contributions from business, government, and nonprofits. That’s because nonprofits have built the critical infrastructure to channel volunteers and other resources exactly where they’re needed, quickly and efficiently. Because they operate locally, nonprofits understand communities at the ground level, including both the culture and the people who live there. And because nonprofits are trusted to do the right thing, people donate their time, treasure, and talent every day – working in and through them – to support their neighbors and their community’s needs.
We bear witness to this in times of disaster. Long after the media move on to other concerns, long after the necessary emergency response, nonprofits remain, helping people put the pieces of their lives backtogether, galvanizing resources, directing volunteers, and providing countless forms of support and relief. We see this in the immediate deployment of nonprofit disaster resources to sites devastated by hurricanes; in the continued community support provided to Barrow County students, families, and staff in the aftermath of the Apalachee High School attack; in the sustained response to the COVID pandemic and its long-standing effects on families and individuals; in help for victims of apartment fires or a myriad of other situations.
From election messages to news of global conflict, devastating weather events, and everything in between, we are all inundated with attempts to grab our attention – and, in many cases, rightly so. But so many of the issues involved are addressed on the local stage by nonprofits. Throughout the year, and especially in the season of giving, we in the nonprofit community challenge you to think about the nonprofits in your community, both in their role as unifiers and in their impact.
To further showcase the ways that nonprofits bring us together, we’re thrilled to share that, once again, giving records were broken for this year’s GAGives on Giving Tuesday, which took place on December 3. While the full total for the day is still being calculated from a range of online sources, we can report that nonprofits raised over $3.45 million on GAgives.org alone, thanks to the generosity of more than 11,700 donors – more than 13 percent more than what was raised for 2023 on GAgives.org.
Beginning in 2012, the same year as GivingTuesday — the international day of giving taking place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — GAgives has galvanized Georgians each year to join a statewide giving movement. Since its inception, more Georgians have taken part in GAgives each year, and a total of $159.42 million in donations so far from over 561,000 individual gifts. However, the great thing about giving — as nonprofits demonstrate through their service — is that giving can happen year-round. If you haven’t already, we ask you to consider how you might give of your time, talent, and treasure to support the nonprofits that are working every day to enhance your life, your family, and your community.
