By Rita Price, The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS – Donate, volunteer or share an act of kindness on Tuesday and the Columbus Foundation will extend your goodwill.
“It’s a nudge and some incentive,” said the foundation’s Lisa Courtice.
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Nonprofit organizations throughout the nation have been urging the public to embrace the Tuesday after Thanksgiving as Giving Tuesday, a post-Black Friday, post-Cyber Monday kickoff to the busy charitable season.
The Columbus Foundation is among those offering ideas and rewards. Anyone who makes a gift of $20 or more on Giving Tuesday to the foundation’s emergency assistance Gifts of Kindness Fund, for example, will receive a $20 charitable gift card that can be used to support one of more than 600 local charities.
Share an act of kindness on social media using the hashtag #GiveKindnessColumbus and you’ll be entered in a random drawing to select a local charity to receive a $500 grant from the foundation. Ten $500 winners will be chosen throughout the day.
Created in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y, a cultural center in New York City, Giving Tuesday (it also goes by its hashtag #GivingTuesday) is growing but still has a ways to go as a movement, observers say.
“The spirit of Giving Tuesday is good and right for nonprofits for this time of year,” Courtice said. “We love that it comes off of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But it hasn’t caught on like some other giving programs yet, so the long-term sustainability is not clear yet.”