PSU encourages philanthropy with #GivingTuesday

The holidays are a season of giving, and Penn State has a few things on its wish list this year.

It’s hard to get a whole university on Santa’s knee, so the school is going a different direction, participating in #GivingTuesday.

The hashtag campaign encouraging philanthropy was started in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York City to capitalize on the post-Thanksgiving retail holidays of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

“We are calling on alumni, parents, friends and fans to raise their voices in support of Penn State students by making a gift of any size to any area of the university,” said Rodney Kirsch, senior vice president for development and alumni relations at Penn State, in a release.

“This is the first year that we are really doing a full on effort like this,” said Jessica Peters, assistant director for the Office of Annual Giving.

“We’ve had several giving days in the past,” she said.

It started in 2011. Peters said last year they started to transition toward the #GivingTuesday model.

“But this year, we’re including the challenges, the online component,” she said.

The challenges are efforts to get people excited about specific areas of giving. They include scholarships for student-athletes and support of the Morgan Academic Support Center. Gifts to that effort will include matching points by the Nittany Lion Club.

Another challenge goes toward purchasing textbooks for the University Libraries. Barnes and Noble Booksellers will be matching community gifts of up to $10,000.

“That impacts every student across all of the campuses,” Peters said. “We want to purchase a copy of every textbook used at Penn State to put in every library.”

The university is also encouraging other gifts that could fund things like scholarships or society memberships for students.

“Rather than a dollar goal or participation as a goal, we just want to have as many people step up and participate as possible,” Peters said.

The effort will also include Penn State student groups that will be promoting their own philanthropic efforts and encouraging other students to get into the charitable swing of things. Penn State’s class gift campaign will be encouraging donations and exciting people about philanthropy from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the HUB-Robeson Cultural Center. In addition to getting a #GivingTuesday T-shirt, donors can also register to win a bookstore giftcard.

It is an effort the university is pushing for gifts or involvement big or small.

“No matter how much you give or what you support, our goal is to hear as many Penn State voices on #GivingTuesday as possible, proving just what our community is capable of doing when we all act together,” Kirsch said.

According to Peters, there is no dollar amount that the university is shooting for or no level of participation it wants to achieve.

“We just want as many people to step up and participate as possible,” she said.

That grass-roots feeling mirrors what Penn State President Eric Barron has said about the university’s next fundraising campaign, set to begin in 2016, with a goal of getting donors excited about projects and making philanthropy more attainable.

“This definitely will feed into the goals of what the president has for the campaign,” Peters said. “We are hoping this is a day when people who haven’t given to Penn State before can take advantage of that.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2015 at 10:05 PM with the headline "PSU encourages philanthropy with #GivingTuesday."