On October 24, the following email message was sent to the DeKalb County nonprofit community. 

Greetings Nonprofit Community,

Many of you participated in Give Local DeKalb County 2016 and I wanted to update you on what we have been doing to evaluate the future of our giving day.

As you probably know, Kimbia—the platform that hosted Give Local America events across the United States—experienced a significant technology issue on May 3, which impacted our giving day and about 40 others nationwide. Despite this, we had a record-breaking event that raised valuable donations for DCNP-member nonprofits. Even so, the Kimbia issues prompted us to step back and comprehensively re-evaluate our giving day.

Here are a few details related to our evaluation process:

• May-July: connected with other giving day coordinators nationwide to learn from each other’s experiences, researched the various giving day platform providers, conducted a survey of nonprofits and donors who participated in Give Local, recruited a representative Working Group to lead the evaluation process
• August-September: Working Group meetings took place and so did vendor demonstrations, a final decision about which vendor to use was made by the Working Group on September 30
• October: ongoing decision-making by the Working Group, final negotiations with our selected vendor, contract signed

These points are just a sampling of the activities we carried out. We deliberated every aspect of our giving day starting with a discussion of whether or not DCNP should even continue coordinating an event like this in the future. It was extremely important to me that a rigorous process was put into place to help guide our decision making. Equally important was that representatives from DCNP’s membership were included in the decision making. I would like to recognize the following Working Group members for their time, insight, and diligence throughout this evaluation process:

• Eric Biletzky
• Micki Chulick
• Cindy Khatri
• Brian Reis
• Lynette Spencer
• Sarah Trygstad
• Anita Zurbrugg

In 2017, our giving day will be hosted by GiveGab—a provider that offers benefits beyond just serving as our giving day platform. Forefront (formerly Donor’s Forum) has selected GiveGab for their statewide Giving Tuesday event as well. The giving day will take place on May 4, 2017 (save the date!).

Stay tuned to learn more about the 2017 giving day and the new functionality you will have access to through GiveGab, at an event to be held in early January.

As 2016 begins to wind down, DCNP is ramping up for another year of collaborative training, professional development, networking, and programs like the DCNP-NGOLD Internship Program and our MicroGrant Program. I want to take this opportunity to thank those of you who are DCNP members and remind you all that 2017 membership is just around the corner. We hope you will continue on as active members of DCNP and, for those who are not members, we hope you will consider joining! We will formally roll out a membership reminder in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, please check out some of our Member Benefits or contact me directly to learn more.

Thank you very much.
Best regards,

Ben Bingle
Manager, DeKalb County Nonprofit Partnership
DeKalb County Community Foundation
475 DeKalb Avenue, Sycamore, IL 60178
815-748-5383
ben@dekalbccf.org
dcnp.org