The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the region’s largest grantmaker and permanent endowment, has a new idea for gift giving: Donate to a local non-profit by buying “giveGreater” gift cards.
The gift-giver buys a giveGreater card, and the recipient gets to chose where the money gets donated.
The nonprofit groups that can receive donations through the program are listed on www.giveGreater.org.
The Valley groups that can receive donations include:
- The Shelton Economic Development Corporation
- The Valley United Way
- The Boys&Girls Club of the Lower Naugatuck Valley
- Birmingham Group Health Services
- Lower Naugatuck Valley Parent Child Resource Center,
- The Rape Crisis Center of Milford, which serves the Valley
- Area Congregations Together, which runs the Spooner House,
- Massaro Community Farm
- TEAM
- Online Journalism Project, which oversees the Valley Independent Sentinel
- The Greater Valley Salvation Army
The foundation is running a special promotion all day Dec. 15. Every 10th unique person to order a giveGreater card in any amount will get an additional $500 giveGreater card to designate to a local non-profit organizations.
The $500 cards will be available until all the campaign funds are spent.
This is the last giving incentive The Community Foundation will offer in 2011 as part of its I Give It Forward campaign, which has already generated more than $250,000 for Greater New Haven nonprofits.
giveGreater cards are available at The Community Foundation’s website www.cfgnh.org.
“Our hope is that people will take advantage of this opportunity, which encourages them to introduce the work of local nonprofits to friends and family through giving,” says Will Ginsberg, President & CEO of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
giveGreater cards were launched by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven in November as a new way build new local donors who support the community’s nonprofits.
They are virtual cards designed to be given to employees, employers, teachers, friends, family and others as thank yous, or to celebrate birthdays, holidays or special occasions.
giveGreater cards are available to order until December 31, 2011 and come in $50, $100, $250, $500 and $1,000 denominations.
Persons who order giveGreater cards are making a charitable donation to The Community Foundation, which is fully tax deductible. The giveGreater card redemptions occur when card recipients designate the value of the card to a nonprofit profiled on www.giveGreater.org by March 31, 2012. The value of unredeemed cards will be distributed as grants by The Community Foundation to nonprofits.
giveGreater.org is an online database created by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven in 2010 that provides comprehensive information on local nonprofits to enable donors an efficient and effective way to make gifts with knowledge and confidence to the areas of interest and organizations that they wish to support.
The goals of giveGreater.org are to increase the amount of giving to local causes, strengthen the nonprofit sector and increase transparency. There are currently more than 160 nonprofits profiled on the site.
The Community Foundation provides giveGreater.org as a free resource to the community, pays an annual licensing fee for the online platform, and maintains the database and website. In addition, nonprofits are not charged a fee to have a profile on giveGreater.org and are eligible to participate in periodic giving campaigns designed to increase their visibility in the community and attract support. giveGreater.org is powered by GuideStar, a nationally-recognized institution that connects people and organizations with information on the programs and finances of more than 1.7 million IRS-recognized nonprofits.
Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, millions of dollars each year are distributed from an endowment of $330 million in more than 800 named funds at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation works toward building a stronger community by: taking measures to improve student achievement, including partnering with the City of New Haven and Yale University to create New Haven Promise which promotes college education as an aspiration and provides graduates college scholarships; serving as the lead for New Haven Healthy Start, a federally funded program to improve maternal health and reduce the infant mortality rate; working with various groups to grow and deepen the impact of their philanthropy; identifying and supporting grassroots leadership; and strengthening nonprofits and promoting philanthropy through technical assistance programs, a new online knowledge and giving resource known as www.giveGreater.org, and raising awareness about community issues at www.cfgnh.org/learn.
