Big Day of Giving a huge success, raises $11.6 million for 600-plus Sacramento nonprofits
“Huge Day of Giving” may have been a more accurate moniker this year.
Big Day of Giving, the Sacramento area’s annual fundraising drive, saw more $11.6 million pour in for 615 local nonprofit organizations during Thursday’s 24-hour event. Numbers are preliminary and may go higher by the time the tallies are made official, but close to 64,000 donations came in during the Big Day, according to its website.
The event shattered last year’s record of over $8.4 million in donations, eclipsing that mark before 5 p.m.
Nonprofits that provide food for the needy got the highest totals. Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services topped the event’s leaderboard, with $354,000 raised from almost 1,600 donations. The Salvation Army was No. 2 with more than $280,000 raised, and the Yolo Food Bank came close to $200,000.
Here is the Top 10 on the leaderboard, as of 7:45 a.m. Friday. Numbers remain preliminary.
- Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services — $354,185
- The Salvation Army — $281,686
- Yolo Food Bank — $199,751
- Placer Land Trust — $175,205
- Sacramento SPCA — $161,191
- Front Street Animal Shelter — $158,150
- Crocker Art Museum — $147,369
- Kiwanis Family House — $145,388
- Sacramento Loaves and Fishes — $142,671
- Sacramento Children’s Home — $136,018
Nine other nonprofits raised more than six figures in donations, including Capital Public Radio, Sacramento Splash, the Sacramento Zoological Society, PRIDE Industries and The Sofia, home of B Street Theatre.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recession it has wrought, nonprofits had looked to the Big Day of Giving as a desperately needed lifeline, with some organizations’ budgets teetering in the balance.
Linda Beech Cutler, organizer of the event and CEO of the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, said a survey of about 250 area nonprofits showed 75 percent believe the shutdown will have a severe, very severe or extremely severe impact on their finances.
Major Ivan Wild, divisional commander for the Sacramento chapter of the Salvation Army, told The Bee two weeks before this year’s charity drive that the organization usually raises roughly $100,000 through the Big Day, but because the coronavirus crisis has disrupted some of its usual fundraising efforts while creating an 800 percent increase in demand for food services, the goal this year was set at $250,000. The Salvation Army exceeded that by more than $30,000.
Sacramento Splash, an education nonprofit that usually spends this time of year giving field trips for elementary school students to the vernal pools near Mather but has pivoted to free online lessons, had set a goal of $85,000 before the pandemic hit.
CEO Mackenzie Wieser said two weeks ago that that target seemed “lofty” given the difficult financial times. But Splash raised nearly $108,000, surpassing the nonprofit’s goal by over $23,000.
Performing arts nonprofits that had depended on live audiences and packed theaters, which now may be among the last venues in California’s gradual reopening process, also expressed urgent need for donations.
Broadway Sacramento, which operates the popular summer theater series known as Music Circus, raised about $93,500 toward its $100,000 goal.
CLARA, the E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts, which rents space at low rates to eight different groups, put out a call on its website for $10,000 to continue facilitating youth arts education. More than $13,000 poured in for CLARA on the Big Day.
