ExtraGive 2019 – Thank You
Thank you for making the 2019 Extraordinary Give the largest single day of on-line giving in Lancaster County history! On November 22, our community came together to support causes we care about and hosted celebrations from bucket drumming and pop-up puppy petting pods, to art events and dance parties. 
On that day you, your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers visited ExtraGive.org and generously gave more than $10.5 million to one or more of the 521 Lancaster-serving organizations. That’s more than $439,000 per hour; $7,300 per minute; and $122 every second of the day! That also makes Lancaster’s Extraordinary Give the largest per capita giving day in the history of the world!
While the dollars and cents are essential, our focus this year was on extending the reach of the event and providing access to ALL who wanted to be a part of Extraordinary Give. To do this we lowered the minimum contribution from $25 to $10. And, we emphasized that, even for individuals who were not able to give $10, they could go to ExtraGive.org, find an organization they believed in, and use their networks to promote that organization’s mission and participation.
These types of endorsements are priceless and resulted in many new gifts. Our community efforts were wildly successful! On that single day, nearly 29,000 of us donated (that’s more than 5,000 more givers than last year) and more than 1,000 people used their networks to support the participating organizations. That’s extraordinary!
In fact, due to overwhelming generosity on many levels, the website platform stalled and stopped for some important giving hours during the event. For the first time ever, we faced technical challenges that threatened to derail our generosity. The Community Foundation team did our very best to ensure that everyone who wanted to give, got that chance. Because the giving website was down for key evening hours, we decided to leave the platform open for those who were unable to donate during the normal 24-hour period. The giving continued through Tuesday evening. When those donors completed their gifts, the community’s stunning total rose to more than $10.9 million!
In eight days since 2012, when the Extraordinary Give was first launched by the Lancaster County Community Foundation, our community has joyfully given over $53 million.
Our team is proud to be part of a community that cares so much and generously gives like no other. The Extraordinary Give brings our unique and diverse community together to celebrate our collective generosity and build on the possibilities for our future. This year, we again showed the world how generous our community can be. We joined together with tens of thousands of our neighbors and friends to give a little extra.
At the Community Foundation, we invite all those whose generosity was on display during Extraordinary Give to learn more about our work and how we can help your generosity live on Forever in Lancaster. As we celebrate this season of both thanks and giving, we’re thankful that we live in the most generous community in the world.
If you want to learn more about the technology challenges, click here.
