Get Lucky with Bonus Bucks

By Angela Bevacqua, Communications Specialist

Who doesn't like prizes--especially when they're cash?

For the second annual Colorado Gives Day—Tuesday, December 6—we’re sweetening the pie. Not only will we continue the Incentive Fund ($300,000 fully funded by FirstBank), but we’re adding lots of $1,000 and $5,000 cash prizes to help Colorado nonprofits.

Some of these prizes are earned and some are the luck of the draw. Here’s what you need to know about the “lucky” prizes:

Bonus Bucks
Bonus Bucks are $1,000 cash prizes that give donors a chance to win money for the nonprofits they love. At least once per hour over the 24-hour course of Colorado Gives Day we will randomly draw a donor’s name. The nonprofit this person donated to in that hour will receive the cash prize. Our goal is to award at least 24 of these $1,000 prizes.

What if a donor supports multiple organizations in one transaction? We can isolate each donation for the drawing.

How can a donor win? If she’s up at odd times of the night, like we’ll be, her chances may increase if she makes her donation then.

A Few Fine Points

A donor can only win once, so it won’t help to donate multiple times to a favorite organization. But nonprofits can be the recipients more than once, so lots of different supporters throughout the day are a good thing.
Winners will be announced on GivingFirst's Facebook and Twitter pages shortly after the drawing. All results will be compiled and posted in Colorado Gives Day’s Prize Room.

Seeking Bonus Bucks Sponsors!
Colorado businesses who wish to support Colorado nonprofits will be sponsoring one or more of these prizes. Our goal is to award at least 24 prizes for each hour of the day, but we’d love to offer more. If you know a local Colorado business that would like to be a part of Colorado Gives Day, ask them to contact abevacqua@CommunityFirstFoundation.org for sponsorship details.

Tune in next time when we’ll talk about the kind of prizes you can earn—called High Five prizes, and valued at $5,000 each.

Learn more: FAQs

Comments

Blog 1: Tips on How to Read Form 990

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Have you ever been advised to look at a nonprofit’s Form 990 before making a donation? Then you look at it and wonder how to make sense of it all? If you aren’t an accountant or nonprofit administrator, you may avoid the daunting task. On our online giving website ColoradoGives.org, we require nonprofits to provide several documents, including the Form 990 as appropriate, to encourage transparency about their programs and finances. We don’t evaluate nonprofits on the website; we require nonprofits to share information to help donors make informed decisions about giving. I asked Community First Foundation’s finance department to help us interpret this useful document. We will do this in two blogs: Blog 1 shares the basics of Form 990 and Blog 2 delves deeper. Q: What exactly is the Form 990? Form 990, called the Return of Organizations Exempt From Income Tax, must be filed with the IRS each year by charitable organization

Colorado Gives Day: Reflections from Nonprofits

By Angela Bevacqua, Communications Specialist Two months later and we’re still learning from Colorado Gives Day 2010. As we pour through data and listen to the experiences of our nonprofit friends and donors, we gain new insights about fundraising and philanthropy in Colorado. At a recent gathering of our Nonprofit Advisory Committee—a varied group of GivingFirst nonprofits that help us improve the program—we heard these reflections about The Day: Dan Hanley, director of development for Boulder County AIDS Project , said that 45% of their donations on Dec. 8 were from new donors. The agency raised more than $20,000 from 178 donations after a whirlwind of events. Dan said there are limitless ways in which you can promote your agency for Colorado Gives Day. They began soliciting support in the late-night hours of Dec. 7 at a bar in Denver, then moved on to the Denver Diner in the a.m., then several coffee shops in Boulder, and ended with a standing-room-only concert at the Boulder

Meeting Space Celebrity Sighting: Natalie Portman

Valerie Brown, Meeting Space Administrator I met Natalie Portman in the Community First Foundation Meeting Space yesterday. Natalie Portman (L) and Valerie Brown in the Foundation's free Meeting Space Okay, not the Natalie Portman of Star Wars , V for Vendetta and Black Swan . This Natalie Portman is a top-notch meeting facilitator who was working with a group advancing Mental Health First Aid in Jefferson County. Led by Jefferson Center for Mental Health, the group met in our largest meeting room to discuss training community members on how to identify persons who may benefit from mental health resources. Jefferson Center for Mental Health is one of the dizzying array of nonprofits to have come through our doors since we opened the Meeting Space a year ago! February 2016 saw one meeting lasting four hours with six people. February 2017 saw 37 meetings for a total of 250 hours with 799 people through the door! In fact, in the first year we have hosted 269 mee

ColoradoGives.org

Search This Blog