In this final post of 2013, I asked a few people for their tips on keeping generosity alive in 2014. These are real people with really practical ideas.

Here are my two favorite.

Easy ways to keep Giving Tuesday generosity alive in 2014

1. Explore payroll deduction

   “If your employer has a program setup, make charitable contributions through payroll deductions. The advantages of this are:

   • It is much easier than having to write a check or enter your credit card online
   • It makes it easier to consistently donate, once you set it up, you don’t have to worry about it anymore
   • It makes your contributions more valuable if your employer has a matching program
   • At the end of the year, you have a record of exactly how much you gave for tax purposes
   • You can typically choose from a variety of organizations (both local and national) to give to

   Click Here for more information on how to give through payroll deductions.”

   Jay Kelly, VP-Operations, Social Media Explorer

2. Don’t wait for “influencers”

   “Be generous with your invitations; everyone has something to offer.

   “In this social media realm of experts, followers and Klout, it’s tempting to only extend opportunities and partnerships to certain ‘influencers.’ But this year, I’ve been amazed and humbled by what less ‘established’ people offer when invited to contribute. Be open to giving everyone a chance; the potential rewards are worth it.”

   Marlene Oliveira, Founder and Managing Editor, Nonprofit MarCommunity

What will you resolve?

Those are a couple ideas for helping keep generosity alive in 2014. What will you resolve to do?

Tell us in the comments!

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Tell Social Media Explorer about My Donation for Aggregated Reporting Purposes Here

Read more about Social Media Explorer’s #GivingTuesday program.

The post Keeping Giving Tuesday alive all year – #GivingTuesday appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

We don’t need an organized day on the calendar to give.

Nichole Kelly started SME off on the giving path last Christmas. Since then, C.C. Chapman and Marc Pitman, two of the most incredibly kind and passionate people you’ll meet, have given us profiles of dozens of organizations and causes to support. If you’d like to review, we’ve got a whole category of #GivingTuesday posts here.

But our focus on #GivingTuesday is not a content strategy. It’s not a one-off idea to fill the coffers here so the search engines have something to feed on. It’s so we can enlighten you, our wonderful readers, about the opportunities you have to help organizations and efforts to help make our world a better place.

So we’ll keep doing #GivingTuesday posts. We figure you won’t mind and will even occasionally enjoy supporting the organizations we tell you about.

The effort I want to tell you about this Tuesday is, ironically, a little selfish, but in a very altruistic way. As you know, my day job is now at CafePress. We’ve recently announced a partnership with the American Red Cross that will allow us to not only support the fantastic, life-saving organization, but also respond quickly as a company to disaster relief efforts and other urgent needs the Red Cross sees.

(Trust me, giving money away as a publicly traded company is complicated. This partnership allows CafePress to immediately turn fan designs and other products our community creates in the wake of a disaster and immediately put profits to good use!)

To kick off the partnership, we thankfully don’t have to respond to a disaster. What we have done is launch custom holiday ornaments that you can create using your own art, family photos or designs. A portion of the proceeds goes directly to the American Red Cross. We hope it will be the first of many opportunities we have to drive donations while giving the donator (that would be you) something in return — an ornament, tee shirt or other product.

Whether you go get a custom ornament or not, don’t let Dec. 3 be the only #GivingTuesday. It’s not at Social Media Explorer. We hope it isn’t for you.

The post Every Tuesday is #GivingTuesday at Social Media Explorer appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

You can go through the process of checking financials on a site like GuideStar.org, interviewing board members and staff, and checking news stories. But that takes a lot of time.

An alternative is to let your local United Way.

Let the United Way do the vetting

The nearly 1800 local United Ways work in 45 countries and territories to better their communities. Each United Way collaborates with thousands of volunteers to vet nonprofits so you don’t have to. These volunteers are

• Creating framework for assessing the needs in their community
• Convening the nonprofits to help them seek funding
• Working with employers to help make it easy for employees to contribute
• And work to assess the nonprofits are stewarding the gifts well.

All so you don’t have to!

Make a gift today

There are lots of ways you can take action. You can volunteer for local causes, you can advocate for them, and you can donate. Simply go to http://www.unitedway.org/take-action/ to find out more about supporting your local United Way!

There are lots of videos on the United Way YouTube channel. Here’s one:

Tell Social Media Explorer about My Donation for Aggregated Reporting Purposes Here

Read more about Social Media Explorer’s #GivingTuesday program.

The post United Way – #GivingTuesday appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The timing couldn’t have been better as I was getting ready to sit down and write this week’s #GivingTuesday post.

The No Kid Hungry campaign connects kids in need with nutritious food and teaches their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals. The campaign also engages the public to make ending childhood hunger a national priority.

Share Our Strength began in the basement of a row house on Capitol Hill in 1984, in response to the ‘84-‘85 famine in Ethiopia. Brother and sister Bill and Debbie Shore started the organization with the belief that everyone has a strength to share in the global fight against hunger and poverty, and that in these shared strengths lie sustainable solutions.

Stop and think about the fact that 1 in 5 American children struggle with having enough food to eat. That should shock and appall you. Just think about how much food you and your family threw away last week and then realize that we are talking about 16 million kids.

What I love about this initiative is that while they will happily take your donation, they really want your actions and words to do the heavy lifting.

They’ve embraced social media to make it very easy for anyone to tweet out the latest statistics or to share a video on Facebook. They realize that educating our country about this problem is the first step to finding a solution.

As a parent, I was psyched to discover a youth focused site so that our children can also become aware of the issue and take their own actions to help.

No Kid Hungry does a great job of educating everyone about the problem and giving tangible and easy things that can be done by anyone to make a difference. They’ve also partnered with some great organizations that both help get the word out, but also are working towards helping end the campaign by making sure our kids get food.

We live in one of the greatest nations in the world and the fact that we still have children every day wondering where their next meal will come from angers me. If we can’t take care of our own children, who will?

Please consider donating, subscribing or taking action today to No Kid Hungry. The hungry children of our country thank you.

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Tell Social Media Explorer about My Donation for Aggregated Reporting Purposes Here

Read more about Social Media Explorer’s #GivingTuesday program.

The post No Kid Hungry – #GivingTuesday appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So to make that a reality, I have offered SME’s platform on Tuesdays to highlight a non-profit or multiple non-profits that some of our readers feel are worthy of your donations. To support the movement I had to reach out to some friends and I’m so excited to announce that C.C. Chapman, author of Amazing Things Will Happen and Marc Pitman from the Fundraising Coachhave agreed to provide content on non-profits that they feel are not only worthy, but will also greatly benefit from our donations. So we’re giving you the recommendations every Tuesday and all you have to do is open your wallet and donate. Let’s all do our parts to make 2013 a year of giving.

What is the best way to kick this whole thing off? Howabout we all go find a charity and donate $10 RIGHT NOW! If you are looking for a non-profit for your donation jump over to Razoo’s donation list here. You can search by cause, by location, and much more to find a charity with a cause you are passionate about.

If you are interested in keeping track of end of you giving, Philanthropy has an interactive chart to show progress. So that’s it. It’s pretty simple. Let’s make 2013 a year that we all commit to donating $10 a week to a charity. And let’s start right now by giving a non-profit $10. If we can all do that, I assure you Amazing Things Will Happen.

We’d love to find a way to keep track of all the donations we band together and drive. So if you are interested please take our survey and tell us about your donation using the link below. Your information will remain anonymous and will only be used to provide aggregated reporting to our readers. At the end of the year we’ll provide a report to our readers on how much we donated. And hey, why not leave a comment with a link in case others are interested in donating as well. We’ll assume all donations are $10 unless you specify otherwise. What do you think? Can we all band together and make a big difference in 2013? 

Tell Social Media Explorer about My Donation for Aggregated Reporting Purposes Here

NOTE: Please, no self-promotion of non-profits in the comments section of these posts. Leave it to your community to recommend you. For non-profits who are interested in being highlighted this year. Feel free to reach out to C.C. Chapman or Marc Pitman on Twitter.

The post Amazing Things Will Happen if You Give to a Non-Profit Today appeared first on Social Media Explorer.