Dramatically Doubling Dollars on #GivingTuesday

After Thanksgiving, Every Day Is “Special”

My daughter and I went shopping Friday morning (yes, on Black Friday.) We didn’t get up at a ridiculously early hour, but she was in town from college and we were both intrigued by the idea of a deal, so we set off to see what we could find.

Although we did find some bargains, the best takeaway of the day would not fit in a shopping bag. The best takeaway was time with my daughter, lunch at our favorite sushi restaurant, and catching up on each other’s lives.

Bonding Over Bento

With Black Friday and Small Business Saturday behind us, she returned to college, leaving me with a social media stream full of all the “deals” available on Cyber Monday.

It’s the activity in cyber space on #GivingTuesday, though, that comes closest to fulfilling the message of the upcoming holiday season.

Why Is #GivingTuesday Different?

December 2, 2014 is marked #GivingTuesday – a day of giving. This global day inspires personal philanthropy and encourages bigger, better and smarter charitable giving during the holiday season, showing that the world truly gives as good as it gets.

Many causes I love are having campaigns on #GivingTuesday, but I do want to take a moment to highlight Shot at Life, one of the Giving Tuesday 2014 causes nearest and dearest to my heart, and one which has the potential to have an enormous impact thanks to matching donors.

This Giving Tuesday, Shot at Life is focusing on pneumococcal disease, which kills an estimated 1.1 million children under the age of five annually.

The only cute pneumonia is a stuffed pneumonia.

This disease hits hardest in communities weakened by poverty. Malnutrition and undernourishment leave babies without the ability to fight infection. This video, originally created for World Pneumonia Day, really made me think: What if this were my child?

Five Dollars Will Become Ten …

$5 can immunize a child against pneumococcal disease. I am committing to either raise $5 from 5 friends or donate $25 myself because that $25 is going to magically become $50 (yes I wish it always worked that way but this is a very limited time offer for some extremely deserving children in our global family).

Bill and Melinda Gates believe that vaccines are one of the best investments you can make to improve global health. They are very supportive of Shot@Life advocating and fundraising for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. With replenishment coming in early 2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would like to support Shot@Life and Gavi by matching donations on #GivingTuesday (up to $200,000)!

In addition, this #GivingTuesday, MAM (@mambaby) – a global leader in pacifiers, baby bottles and infant oral development products – is supporting Shot@Life. Their generous donation of $25,000 will help provide thousands of pneumonia vaccines to children in need around the world. Donate to Shot@Life and help give children everywhere a shot at a healthy life and join the conversation on Twitter by following @ShotAtLife and #GivingTuesday.

Thank you, MAM, for making the first gift of $25,000 toward our $200,000 goal!

Makes my $5 seem pretty do-able, right? How about you? You can easily donate your $5 at this link.

Paula Kiger

Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.