#GivingTuesday

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Contents:

What is #GivingTuesday?

#GivingTuesday was founded in 2012 by NY’s 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Together with a team of influencers and founding partners a global movement was launched that has engaged over 30,000 organizations worldwide. Pretty impressive.

The Big Idea Behind #GivingTuesday

#GivingTuesday harnesses the potential of social media and the generosity of people around the world to bring about real world change in their community, their region and throughout the globe. It provides a platform to encourage the donation of time, resources and talents to address humanitarian causes. It also brings together the collective power of unique, yet like-minded partners including non-profits, corporations, faith-based organizations as well as families and friends.

The idea of being “better together” isn’t just a catchy phrase. It’s a reality anytime like-valued people partner together for a common purpose. The idea behind #GivingTuesday is that after we wrap up the Thanksgiving holiday with our families that we extend our gratefulness and thankfulness towards others first. So, before the crazy holiday season of gift-giving, tree-trimming and holiday fun, we take a moment and think about others who don’t have the resources we have. When you truly have a grateful heart, thanks and giving always go together. It’s a natural progression of gratitude that flows from one heart to another.

How Do I Donate?

It’s simple. Click here — donate — or visit our website (UUSJ.org).

The best part is 100% of your gift goes immediately to help UUSJ advocate for UU principles, organize UU volunteers to live their advocacy values, and mobilize UUs nationwide to voice their advocacy concerns.

Every single penny goes to UUSJ programs or projects. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Why Should I Be Involved?

Because somewhere within you there is a calling to Build a Better World, and to that end, a belief that to do so you must join in community, one way or another. You know that together we can go further, and accomplish more than we can individually and isolated.

At UUSJ we believe the same, Building a Better World was the theme from our 2017 8th Social Justice Awards Ceremony this past October. To build that better world involves advocating UU values on the most complex and nuanced policy issues of our day. And you know UUSJ is the only UU organization leading UU volunteers up to Capitol Hill to engage on behalf of UUs nationwide.

Most people just don’t know how to help build that better world, how to make a difference! How lucky you are to have UUSJ, to lean into advocacy on priority issues of escalating inequality, the environment, and immigration. For a growing list of accomplishments visit our website.

Let’s face it folks, the Trump Administration is leading Congress on a charge to make trickle-down the organizing principle of our society and economy. They are using a portfolio of wrongheaded policies to make the public good an investment vehicle for corporate welfare and the wealthy at the expense of the broad swath of normal people.

These policies won’t Build a Better World, they will worsen the inequity in our nation:

  • they ignore science at the expense of our good green earth,
  • they eliminate needed Healthcare to pay for tax holidays,
  • they cut programs helping the humblest families to prove government has no benefits,
  • they require our fellow human beings to check their right to basic dignity as they cross our borders, and
  • they make education a sort of debtors prison forcing students to pay even more for the education that they need to be successful.

Sad, a tragedy! Basically, Congress is selling out the future of our nation, gambling with the health and stability of our republic and banking that you will ignore the implications for your fellow Americans and neighbors, and forget the ramifications for our children and grandbabies.

If UUs don’t engage who shall? If not us, then who? We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and UUSJ enables all UUs that feel the calling to Build a Better World to advocate for good.

Just as UUSJ seeks to gather UUs together in Building a Better World. This is the essence behind #GivingTuesday. Don’t wait to give till after December 24th when you’ve spent all your energy, time and money. Instead give to worthy endeavors and causes first, with gratefulness and gladness in your heart.

If you are still timid about giving to UUSJ to help Build a Better World, perhaps thinking that you can’t afford to help, let me ask, with all these changes being rammed down our throats, can you afford not too? Can you really sit on the sidelines and watch the rug being pulled out from below your future? What about the future your children and grandbabies will face?

By giving to UUSJ as part of #GivingTuesday, not only will you fulfill a deep need to make a difference, do your part in Building a Better World, you will be the one that receives the greatest blessing. The certainty that you contributed to making a difference.

A New Tradition of Advocacy Donation?

As we’ve said, it’s simple to click here — donate — or visit our website (UUSJ.org).

100% of your gift goes to help UUSJ programs or projects. Every penny goes to UUSJ advocacy activity.

So do as the #GivingTuesday founders suggest, and before your shopping starts, think about how your gifts can literally change the lives of others by bringing UU values to bear on the decisionmaking process of Congress. Involve your kids, friends and family. Explain that this is part of the modern democratic political process, that defending our UU values in the face of the onslaught is as valuable a gift for their future as any you can take.

Our world needs families raising up a new generation of world-changers, mindful of our fragile interconnected nature, and sensitive to a common humanity. You can start a new tradition this year of donating on #GivingTuesday to UUSJ, helping to Build a Better World!