Save The Date: Nov. 15th!

Untitled designFor years Youth Odyssey has been hoping to get on the Coastal Bend Day of Giving and this year we finally made it!!

What is the Coastal Bend Day of Giving you ask? The Coastal Bend Day of Giving is a one-day, online, matching gift campaign held each November to raise funds for nonprofit organizations  who serve the neediest in our area. Local foundations provide the matching funds for the online donations. The project is managed by the Coastal Bend Community Foundation. Last year, within the 24 hour fundraising period, the Day of Giving raised $1,919,271 from 7,309 donations. All of which went towards initiatives and organizations in the Coastal Bend area.

Youth Odyssey’s goal for the Coastal Bend Day of Giving is two-fold:

  1. To receive the much needed funds without the large fundraising expenses
  2. To introduce new donors to Youth Odyssey and our mission – in every event Day-of-Giving,  75% of the donations have been under $100 (so EVERY dollar counts)

IMG_3083Basically, it’s a massive day-long fundraiser that will match what we, Youth Odyssey, raise on our own. Our goal is to raise $16,000 for program support, allowing us to reach further into the neediest of neighborhoods. What ‘program support’ means is being able to establish more programming opportunities to areas of Corpus Christi that have been untouched by Youth Odyssey’s mission. It also means that we can hire more staff to help with new programs, purchasing program supplies, expanding our camp options, update programming and generally help us reach more youth.

With our goal of $16,000 to raise in one day we need to secure promises from donors. By receiving promises it allows Youth Odyssey to gauge whether we will meet our goal or if we need to do more promotion for the event. Assuming we get the promises and reach our goal, the Coastal Bend Community Foundation will double it, giving Youth Odyssey a total raised amount of $32,000. Imagine what we could do with those funds!

The event isn’t until November 15th so what Youth Odyssey is hoping to accomplish before that date is awareness. Awareness of who we are, what we do, and our mission to help at risk youth in the Coastal Bend area to become better versions of themselves. In order to accomplish this, we will be doing our part through social media, but we need to ask for your help.  You already know (or have an idea of) what we do and the impact we are making locally. We are seeking TONS of Youth CBCF-weblogo-2014[1]Odyssey Ambassadors to help spread the word through:
  • Facebook shares
  • Facebook likes
  • Newsletter subscriptions
  • Blog subscriptions/shares
  • Liking and sharing our Instagram
  • Post with #SupportYO
  • Talk about Youth Odyssey to friends and family
  • Have Youth Odyssey come and talk to a group: Call 361-946-6016

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAccording to Coastal Bend Community Foundation, if an organization can secure 100 donors then they can usually meet their match-goal. We want to ensure that all donations, no matter the size, can help reach our $16,000 goal. For comparison, we have had a little over 30 donors give for our summer camps and we are close to our goal of $40,000. However, a lot of those are large businesses who have given large donations. We are hoping, but not banking on, a lot of large donations so we are aiming for numerous small donations to add up throughout the day and give us the push we need to make our goal of $16,000.

We are hoping that, through our Youth Odyssey Ambassadors, we can spread the word about Youth Odyssey’s mission and about the Coastal Bend Day of Giving. So that on November 15th we can meet our dollar-for-dollar match while also getting the word out about what we do.