How Do We Increase Local Giving in Alexandria?
It comes as no surprise that Alexandria was recently named as the nation’s most generous online city for the third year in row in Convio’s annual “Most Charitable Cities” ranking. In 2010, 334 of every 1,000 Alexandria residents donated an average of $78.44 for a total of $3,771,485—that’s almost $4 million dollars donated to charitable causes by Alexandrians last year!
But how much of that generosity helped Alexandria and Alexandrians directly? Convio works with some of the biggest charities in the world, and we suspect a lot more of Alexandria’s generosity could impact Alexandria directly if we pulled together as a community to make it priority. That’s what this challenge is all about. We have "buy local" movements and "eat local" movements; it's time for a "give local" movement in Alexandria.
Throughout the month of April, we want you to submit your ideas about how Alexandria can increase local giving to local charities. How can we focus more of Alexandria’s legendary generosity directly on our community? Can existing institutions do things differently? How can local charities reach more Alexandrians? What can the local business community do? Civic associations? Churches? Your neighbors? Who’s not working together that should be? How can local organizations work together differently?
We know there’s a wealth of brilliance, creativity, and experience out there in our great city and we want to tap into that reservoir. Submit your ideas to increase local giving to local organizations today!
Deadline for Submission: You can submit your ideas for increasing local philanthropy until April 30th. Voting begins immediately so the earlier you submit your ideas, the better.
Prizes: The most popular ideas and their authors will be featured on the ACTion Alexandria blog throughout April and May. If solutions, or even elements of solutions, are implemented, the author will be credited and given the ACTion Hero treatment by ACTion Alexandria. This may or may not involve a cape. Seriously.
Rules:
- Submit a solution with some detail and description of why you think it’s an important solution to the problem, how it might work, and how you think it will help. This will make it easier for others to your solution and vote for it.
- Solutions not submitted seriously will be removed by the Community Manager. We believe in community changing ideas and fun, but not clutter. We are seeking serious solutions from serious people who want to make a positive impact in our community. The same goes for comments. Find out more about ACTion Alexandria’s community guidelines.
- Do share this challenge with your friends, family, pets, boss, etc. It’s your patriotic duty as an Alexandrian. And if you’ve submitted a solution, definitely campaign for votes.
- You can submit more than one solution but don’t go crazy. The emphasis should be on quality over quantity.
Ideas
Launch a city-wide "give local" campaign created through a collaboration of city partners like the Chamber of Commerce, local nonprofits, the City of Alexandria, ACT for Alexandria, local merchants, arts organizations, and even the Alexandria Convention Visitors Authority. The campaign would...
Because many local nonprofits have small staffs and even smaller budgets, it can be a huge strain to put on a successful event. However, Spring2ACTion just gave a terrific example of how nonprofits can come together as a group and raise more money collectively than they would have individually...
Many arts groups throughout Alexandria already do some city engagements at no charge (both the holiday and spring market place/parks performance series as examples), and I'm sure that it would be easy to have a local benefit concert/performance where tickets can be sold/donations made where...
Launch a city-wide "give local" campaign created through a collaboration of city partners like the Chamber of Commerce, local nonprofits, the City of Alexandria, ACT for Alexandria, local merchants, arts organizations, and even the Alexandria Convention Visitors Authority. The campaign would...
Many arts groups throughout Alexandria already do some city engagements at no charge (both the holiday and spring market place/parks performance series as examples), and I'm sure that it would be easy to have a local benefit concert/performance where tickets can be sold/donations made where...
Because many local nonprofits have small staffs and even smaller budgets, it can be a huge strain to put on a successful event. However, Spring2ACTion just gave a terrific example of how nonprofits can come together as a group and raise more money collectively than they would have individually...