Central West Coast Chapter presents Communicating Caring: Lessons Learned from the record-breaking Giving Challenge 2020

An online, 24-hour fundraising event to support local nonprofit organizations in southwest Florida had been scheduled for late April 2020 for more than 18 months, well ahead of any notion of how the coronavirus would disrupt life in Spring 2020. With the rise of stay-at-home orders looming in early March 2020, organizers of Giving Challenge 2020 at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County adjusted plans for the event to unite a four-county region around an opportunity to support friends and neighbors through this digital event to great success. The seventh Giving Challenge exceeded all expectations, raising $18.4 million in 24 hours for 686 organizations from nearly 59,000 donors! Learn from the communications team that lead the Giving Challenge about operations changes in the weeks leading up to the event, how those changes were communicated to participating organizations, as well as their audiences, and efforts to engage event more donors than ever in this important effort to drive and celebrate philanthropy’s role as one of many ways to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic’s health and economic impacts.