Giving Tuesday helps support local charities

Olivia Kirklin, Editor-in-chief|November 29, 2016

Using food donated by community members, Frisco Fastpacs puts together hundreds of meals each week to help ensure children in the area have food to eat when school is not in session. Giving Tuesday is a day that non-profits and charities throughout the area use to raise awareness and funds.

courtesy of Frisco Fastpacs

Using food donated by community members, Frisco Fastpacs puts together hundreds of meals each week to help ensure children in the area have food to eat when school is not in session. Giving Tuesday is a day that non-profits and charities throughout the area use to raise awareness and funds.

Most people know about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but Tuesday is Giving Tuesday, a day less commonly known. In its fifth year, it’s a day designed to kick off the charitable season that asks people to give or donate to those in need. Over the past several years, Frisco-area nonprofits have participated in Giving Tuesday to help support local charities and nonprofits through monetary donations.

“The holidays can be tough for some families,” Melanie Smoot, Frisco Family Services development director said in a Frisco Enterprise article. “Giving Tuesday is a way to give back after all of the craziness of the holidays. There are a lot of families – especially with Frisco’s growing population – that have a need during the holidays. This is a way to equip them.”

Each nonprofit chooses to do various things with the monetary donations gathered on Giving Tuesday. For Frisco Family Services, donations will go directly to providing perishables to their food banks.

“We live in a very affluent community, and it’s sometimes hard to see needs with all of the new developments and exciting things happening in Frisco,” Smoot said. “But we just need to remember that crisis does not discriminate by socioeconomic status.”

For the Frisco Education Foundation, donations will help fund scholarships and grants.

“Any of the funding that comes to us goes to either our scholarship or teacher grant program or our Mindbender Academy,” FEF director Allison Miller said on Frisco Enterprise. “I would say that this community really rallies for nonprofits in the area as far as their philanthropic giving during the holidays.”

Here on campus, the school has worked to raise money for the Samaritan Inn and Small World.

“This year we are again raising money for Samaritan Inn and Small World,” counselor Ryan Kiefer said. “Samaritan Inn is in need of a new lawn mower and by raising money to purchase the lawn mower, we will enable them to divert their funds to other needs as this is a major necessity for them. If we do not raise enough money for the lawn mower, we will purchase gift cards for Samaritan Inn to donate to families in need. For Small World, we’re raising money to purchase gift cards for them give to families in need.”