The 2023 giving season has officially begun on the shores of northern Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where a rebranded community foundation’s #GivingTuesday campaign has just gone live. Other #GivingTuesday campaigns in the United States and worldwide are also getting underway. The annual day of giving began in 2012 and falls the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which this year is Nov. 28.
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation is spearheading this year’s campaign on behalf of 30 community partners. The Hancock, Michigan foundation is not only receiving donations on their behalf but will also provide matching gifts equal in total to the first $250,000 donated, the most since launching its first #Giving Tuesday campaign in 2017.
The 30 partnering nonprofits also constitute a record number of participants with seven new organizations whose missions include childcare, conservation, emergency and fire rescue, recreation and sports. The other 23 organizations add to the diversity of participants with missions spanning music and the arts to human services and include local affiliates of Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers Big Sisters.
“As a community nonprofit ourselves, we wanted to use our leverage and resources to try to raise money for these other nonprofits rather than competing with them for the finite amount of donor resources that are out there,” Kevin Store, president and CEO of Copper Shores Community Health Foundation, told The NonProfit Times. “The marketing and labor we put into it is an additional contribution we make. We don’t take any administrative fees or costs for what we do, so 100% of what gets donated goes right back into the community in addition to the $250,000 we’ve pledged to match.”
The $250,000 match is an increase from last year’s match of $200,000 made possible by a recently received $50,000 donation from the Klungness Family Foundation of Wilmington, Delaware, which is in sunsetting. “They’re working through a dissolution and didn’t want any fanfare or publicity but really liked what we’ve done with #GivingTuesday and wanted to help support that,” Store said.
Copper Shores Community Health Foundation is conducting this year’s campaign under a new name it took this past spring. The foundation, formerly known as the Portage Health Foundation, was previously the fundraising arm for a community hospital that was sold in 2013. The foundation has since expanded its mission to that of a public charitable foundation though it retains the “health” in its name to reflect its origins and continued commitment to public health as well as other causes.
Since launching its first #GivingTuesday campaign six years ago, the foundation has raised than $2.7 million for local nonprofits in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties of Michigan. Last year’s campaign alone raised $659,137, a record haul at that time whose total impact with the $200,000 match came to $859,137.
The foundation makes its home on Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out from the state’s Upper Peninsula onto Lake Superior, making it one of the most northerly locations in the mainland United States. “I think we are the community farthest from any interstate in the country, which is pretty interesting when you think of the vast expanses in places like Montana and some of the other states that are out west,” Store said. “It really is a beautiful place to live, work and raise a family though there’s more going on here than I think people tend to give us credit for when thinking about this part of the country.”
