By João Paulo Vergueiro
The 2021 edition of Dia de Doar will be held on November 30th, a Brazilian initiative that is part of the donate network. #GivingTuesday, an international movement whose mission is to unleash the power of radical generosity around the world.
In Brazil, Donation Day was held for the first time in 2013. Since then, there have been annual events, with an extra version in 2020, Donate Now Day, which promoted donations during the pandemic.
Here the spirit of the movement has always been very similar to that of the original version: Donating is an open, decentralized and hierarchy-free celebration, in which each participant acts in their own way and takes advantage of the date to donate and encourage even more donations.
At the Brazilian Association of Fundraisers (ABCR), as representatives and leaders of the movement in the country and also participants in the Movement for a Culture of Donation network, we have the role of being the “pullers” of this mobilization, the focal point of stimulation to the network. Therefore, we do not receive donations on behalf of organizations and we do not indicate who should receive them, we do not approve materials and we do not even define rules for who will participate. Just want to promote the donation and you are already part of Donate Day!
As it is an open movement, Donation Day gradually began to be carried out directly in communities, and especially in cities (but also in neighborhoods and even states). Little by little, local versions emerged, such as #DoaSorocaba (SP), #DiadeDoarGramado (LOL), #DoaCaicó (RN) and several others. To date, we have identified more than 40 movements like these, 14 of which are active in the 2021 edition.
Called community campaigns, these initiatives encourage the mobilization of resources within the territory, for the causes of the communities themselves. They bring people closer to local organizations, encourage voluntary engagement, and promote a reality that is often invisible to people in the community itself: that our territory is rich in initiatives of socio-environmental impact and transformation, and that we should value them. them and support them.
As they generally do all this without relying on an institutionalized structure – most community campaigns are led by an individual or small local organizations – this year we decided to innovate and opened a call for financial support for the campaigns.
The resources we are going to contribute are not very large, just 400 reais for each of them, and a maximum of 20 community campaigns or coalitions (campaigns that promote donations to a cause, not to a territory). But we believe that this first experience will serve both to boost community donation a little more and also serve as an example of how we can work in the future to further deepen the community spirit of Donating Day.
In Brazil and around the world, Donating Day is an open movement, which promotes generosity and its manifestation in the most varied forms. We believe that by doing so from within the community we are contributing to a more supportive and fraternal society. Donation starts in the community itself.
Find out more about Giving Day at http://www.diadedoar.org.br or on social media, @diadedoar.
