On Give to the Max Day, nonprofits hope you'll do that

Updated: 2:55 p.m. | Posted: 8:45 a.m.

Thursday is Give to the Max Day, that 24-hour online giving spree that has become a big day for Minnesota schools and nonprofits.

All Minnesota nonprofits, including MPR, and all schools recognized by the state are participants in Give to the Max Day. That's several thousand organizations. Last year they collectively received more than $18 million. So this day has become an important fundraising event, especially for those smaller organizations that might not have the means to run their own campaigns.

Give to the Max Day is put on by GiveMN, which created a one-stop shopping website for philanthropy. The idea is that people will go to the website to make donations to their favorite causes. Then they might look around at other Minnesota charities, find new ones they're interested in, and give to them.

If you give regularly to a Minnesota nonprofit, chances are you've received an email in the last couple of days urging you to go its particular page on the GiveMN website to make a donation.

GiveMN sweetens the pot by adding $150,000 in prize money. Random donors win "golden tickets," allowing them to give an additional thousand dollars to the charity of their choice. There are also a couple of $10,000 golden tickets up for grabs. At the end of the day, organizations that do best on Give to the Max Day in a variety of categories are each awarded up to $10,000.

Give to the Max Day has suffered technical problems in the past. Asking hundreds of thousands of people to make a financial transaction on the same website on the same day is tricky. But GiveMN staff say they've been running tests on the website for weeks, and they're confident things will go well on this, the seventh annual Give to the Max Day.

Many midsized and large nonprofits view the day as a bit of a stumbling block in their own end-of-year fundraising strategies. Donors may view giving through Give to the Max Day as the simplest way to give, but the nonprofits may actually receive fewer dollars because of GiveMN's 4.9 percent transaction fee. But of course, if one of their donors wins a golden ticket, they could get an additional thousand dollars.

Because of the high traffic on GiveMN's website on Give to the Max Day, people are encouraged to schedule their contributions in advance online. In past years those donors didn't qualify for golden tickets, which are given out hourly on Give to the Max Day. This year, GiveMN has included a new golden ticket category for donors who scheduled their gifts in advance, to further encourage giving before midnight Wednesday.