Giving Tuesday is huge for nonprofits and is coming up fast. With Give Miami Day today (run by the very awesome Miami Foundation), we have a fantastic opportunity to get ahead of the curve with fundraising!
We’re Loving Give Miami Day
Members of our team are in Miami Day right now celebrating and raising money to support our students and tech projects. Every dollar donated this Give Miami Day goes to student stipends to empower the next generation of technologists to build social services technology for their communities.
No matter where you are in the world, you can join in the Give Miami Day fun! We have a bingo card at the close of this post that you can use to raise money on social media. Then, you can donate those funds via our Give Miami Day page.
Want to learn more about our why? Read the below blog post from FCI’s own Holdern Alpern.
Holden’s Story
When I was eight, I moved from Michigan to Miami, Florida. I don’t remember much aside from my confusion. Here I was, far from home, and I didn’t know anything about anything. Ten years later, and I’m back where I started: in the car with my parents, driving to a new place. I was going to college in Gainesville, Florida. Deep down I knew, but it never really hit me until that moment…I was leaving my home. What was once a strange place was now my hearth, my place of comfort, and I would do anything to protect it.
I’m now in my sophomore year at UF, and as much as I love Gainesville, being away from Miami continues to weigh heavy in my heart. Yes, I miss the beautiful beaches and delicious food, but more importantly, I miss Miami’s vivacity… the force of life that courses through the veins of its people.
I can’t experience Miami when I’m 300 miles away. However, thanks to my internship at FCI, I can give back to the city I now call home. It started with the GoBituary app: a historical education project based on the Miami City Cemetery and the wealth of diverse pioneers that rest there. I have always had a passion for history, so combining it with Miami was a dream come true. My job was studying historical figures who shaped Miami’s story – Alexander Lightbourne, Richard E.S. Toomey, and Charles Peacock – translating any knowledge I gained into educational biographies for visitors of the cemetery. I knew that I was making a difference. By celebrating and publicizing Miami’s forgotten history, I was sending the gift of education back home.
Today was the next step in my journey to help Miami. I came down with a team from FCI to the
Miami Foundation’s Give Miami Day. This is the first time I’ve been at a fundraising event, and it has been amazing. It couldn’t touch me more how many people were putting in hard work, for no personal gain, to directly improve my home community. Whether it was to clean its beaches, help disaster victims, or free the incarcerated and detained, the passion has been unmatched by the nonprofits I’ve met today. When looking at the leaders of these non-profits, it took a mere glance to know that they too saw the value in Miami’s vivacity.
I can only hope they saw the same in me.
We came down to gain support for GoBituary and our Resource Map: a free directory for those in need of food, supplies, shelter, healthcare, employment, and more. As it turns out, this service is very needed in a place like Miami, filled to the brim with philanthropic organizations. By connecting these non-profits with the people that need them, we hope to make Miami an even better place.
I cannot understate the absolute pride I take with my work in FCI; it fills me with joy knowing that I am making a true effort that makes a real difference, instead of just clocking in and out. I couldn’t be happier to be at Give Miami Day. Projects like the Resource Map and GoBituary are almost exclusively driven and maintained by our student workers at the University of Florida, and because nothing we do is for profit, they can only be funded through events such as Give Miami Day! I am so grateful for this opportunity. I’ve never felt closer to Miami than when I am serving it.
If you are interested in funding our projects, which serve Miami and other Florida communities, please donate to our Give Miami Day page. A donation of any size with support young, hungry, and passionate students like me who are truly inspired to make a difference in our communities. Your gift creates the change of tomorrow!
Play fundraising bingo! Share with your friends with your personal venmo. Then, donate what you raise to our Give Miami Day page.
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