It was a chilly day for a group pedal, but the folks who powered their way around Esther Short Park and Vancouver’s new waterfront development Thursday were feeling charitable about it.
Charity was why they climbed aboard the Couve Cycle, a 10-seat beast of a bike that’s half workout, half party. Thursday was “Give More 24!” day in Southwest Washington — the fourth annual extravaganza of online, communitywide giving to good causes of every description. A total of 131 nonprofits and charities from throughout the region registered with the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington, the event founder and host, to be part of the focused fun.
Live entertainment in local cafes, special matching-donation offers, celebrity dunking and other games, art projects for kids and a donated-can-stacking challenge for grownups, a meet-and-greet dinner with symphony musicians and a live-on-Facebook tour of schools and businesses that have benefited from volunteer mentoring were among the many events designed to make donating to charity enjoyable, informative and effective.
Fans of the effort followed an online leaderboard that kept tallying up individual and overall totals in real time. (Final results should be available later today at www.give-more-24.org.)
Local nonprofits are “getting better at thinking outside the box,” said Jim Mains of High Five Media, a Vancouver firm working to market the event. “A lot of them are working more with social media. They’re getting more sophisticated about that.”
Many participating establishments deployed laptop computers or tablets where patrons could make their donations while enjoying some sweet incentives — be they cups of coffee at Grounds for Opportunity Cafe in Kelso or sips of spirits at Double V Distillery in Battle Ground.
Or, for folks who frankly welcomed a little rain and chill after a wildfire summer that grew too close for comfort, there was the Couve Cycle watershed tour, designed as a primer on local waterway health by the Watershed Alliance of Southwest Washington. Couve Cycle junkets around the park and the waterfront — fueled by cookies from Bleu Door Bakery and juice from Funky Fresh Juice — left every half-hour from the clock tower during midday on Thursday.
“We wanted to get people outdoors in nature, even if it’s nature in the city,” said the Watershed Alliance’s executive director, Sunrise O’Mahoney. “And we wanted to show off a way of getting around town that doesn’t involve cars. We’re going to go see the waterfront without polluting.”
A few steps away, DeWayne Ledbetter of iQ Credit Union and Lee Rafferty, formerly of Vancouver’s Downtown Association, were also pumping their legs for charity. Their supposedly 15-minute “swing shift” on the swings in Esther Short Park actually lasted about half an hour, they said, but they too were feeling charitable about the extra effort — since they were raising donations for the Parks Foundation of Clark County.
“The Parks Foundation makes our community healthier and more beautiful. It provides places for kids to play and for people to gather,” Rafferty said.
Raising $1 million for charity in a single day may seem an ambitious goal for this region, but last year’s Give More 24! event barely missed that mark, raising $920,699 (including some matching gifts) in 24 hours. Late on Thursday afternoon, Community Foundation spokesman Maury Harris said the pace of giving appeared to be on track to match that.
Anyone can support their favorite local groups or causes though Give More 24! by making a minimum contribution of $10. Visit give-more-24.org to browse all the options — causes, organizations, the counties where they’re located, special deals and prizes — and how it’s all going so far. The Community Foundation’s goal is to raise $1 million for local charities in a single day. As of 2:30 p.m., more than $430,000 had been raised from more than 1,500 donations.
Use the Twitter hashtag #givemore24 to share fundraising efforts or see what people in the community are doing to raise money for causes.
“It’s been a great day. The generosity is just pouring in,” Harris said.
