Like me, you might’ve already been inundated with emails from local nonprofits to remember them tomorrow, when the Pittsburgh Foundation holds its annual PittsburghGives online initiative.
The deluge of requests is a little annoying, yes, but this is a useful program that’s become a huge focus for nonprofit fundraising around here.
More than 700 nonprofits in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties are registered this year, everyone from small social-service organizations and arts groups to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, from Sojourner House to the ACLU, Bike Pittsburgh and the Center to Prevent Youth Violence.
It works like this: For every dollar you give to your favorite group during this 24-hour period, PittsburghGives donates a pro-rated portion of its total pool of matching funds.
The PittsburghGives match pool for Allegheny County this year is $750,000. So if donors gave a total of $3 million to all groups in the county, the match would be 25 cents on the dollar; your $50 donation would be worth $62.50. (There’s also a match pool of up to $80,000 for Westmoreland County.)
Probably, however, the match will be smaller — a testament, in part, to the program’s growth. Last year, some 13,600 Day of Giving donors gave $6.4 million, up from 7,800 donors and $3.3 million in 2010. This year, the Pittsburgh Foundation is hoping to top $7 million in donations.
Each group also receives a net of the 2.9 percent credit-card fee.
The giving starts at midnight tonight and goes till 11:59:59 p.m. tomorrow; donations will be accepted only during this 24-hour period.
Only MasterCard and Visa donations will be accepted and matched for this event.
The minimum gift is $25 and the maximum gift per individual per organization is $10,000. Gifts are 100 percent tax-deductible.
The complete instruction and list of organizations is at pittsburghgives.org.