At 7 p.m. today, an event will kick off with the aim to raise $1 million total for more than 300 Central Texas nonprofits, including the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation, the Austin Film Society and AMOA-Arthouse, in just 24 hours.
Amplify Austin Day is an offshoot of I Live Here, I Give Here, a service that helps Austinites find local charities they want to donate to, using online techniques. I Live Here, I Give Here targets the hyper-connected 25- to 40-year-old demographic, so it only makes sense that Amplify Austin would also have an online focus.
“Amplify Austin is 24 hours of online giving. It’s a digital giving festival,” said Patsy Woods Martin, I Live Here I Give Here founder and executive director. “Studies have shown that if people don’t start making charitable gifts by the age of 40, they won’t make them in their lifetime. Our target market is the 28- to 40-year-old, and we believe that this particular mode of giving will resonate with that target.”
To donate, people can visit AmplifyATX.org between 7 p.m. today and 7 p.m. tomorrow and search for the name of their nonprofit of choice. Donors can then give a minimum of $25 directly through the secure website. The website will feature a leaderboard to track who is receiving the most donations, and prizes will be given to nonprofits that get the most donations or donors overall and per hour.
The event was open to any nonprofit that is headquartered in Central Texas, is a 501c3, is in compliance with IRS 990 requirements, is registered with the Texas Secretary of State, that provided audited financial records, completed their paperwork by Feb. 15 and then participated in at least four hours of training for the event. About 320 nonprofits are participating.
Although this is the first time the planned annual event has taken place in Austin, I Live Here, I Give Here planned the day after similar events across the country.
“We took a look about a year ago at what was beginning to be a giving trend across the United States,” Woods Martin said. “There were six or eight communities that had done annual days of giving, and we thought this would resonate with Austin because of the young average age and how wired the community is.”
Woods Martin said she and the other organizers are confident that the $1 million goal will be reached and plan to hold the event next year as well.
“Our goal is for this to be a community-wide day of giving and for that to happen on an annual basis,” she said. “We want the donors on Amplify Austin Day to get to know their non-profits better and become more engaged with the work they do.”
A kick-off party will be hosted by and at the Long Center for the Performing Arts from 5 to 7:30 p.m. today. The event will including snacks, beer and wine and performances by Sara Hickman, Soul Track Mind, The Jeff Lofton Electric Thang and The Austin Community Steelband.