ST. PAUL, MINN. — This week The Nexstar Legacy Foundation (the foundation) joined the Global #GivingTuesday Movement, happening Dec. 1, 2015. In its 10th year, the Nexstar Legacy Foundation is celebrating by reflecting this in its #GivingTuesday goals, including two contests leading up to the day.
#GivingTuesday is held annually on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving (in the U.S.), during the widely recognized shopping events, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, to kick-off the holiday giving season and inspire people to collaborate in improving their local communities and to give back in impactful ways to the charities and causes they support.
For the first contest, the foundation is inviting individuals to like its Troops to Trades or Explore the Trades Facebook pages. For every 110 likes the pages receive, the foundation will donate $100 to end veteran homelessness in Minnesota.
The second contest invites individuals to send an “unselfie,” a picture that shows the individual and includes a pledge to give to the foundation. The unselfie must be marked by the hashtags #wearethetrades and #unselfie. The foundation will celebrate these displays of individual giving by providing a $100 gift to the individual with the most likes and shares.
The foundation’s goals are focused on increasing awareness of the foundation and its mission to address the shortage of technicians in the industry. These goals include receiving 110 donations, 1,110 impressions through social media and securing 10 monthly donors on #GivingTuesday. The foundation would also like to see 10 percent of these connections happening through individuals who were not formerly involved with the foundation.
The foundation, through its programs Troops to Trades and Explore the Trades, helps young people and veterans find jobs in the plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical residential service industry. The foundation’s #GivingTuesday campaign will work to strengthen outreach to individuals like Anthony Rodriguez.
After 20 years of service, Rodriguez retired from the military and began his search for a new career. Knowing he wanted a career working with his hands, he used his GI Bill to begin training at Fayetteville Technical Community College for automotive repair and HVAC.
When his home air conditioning broke down, local company Blanton’s Heating and A/C, sent out a technician who shared information with Anthony about the Troops to Trades program.
He immediately applied, was accepted and received a four-week training program at Lennox’s Build-A-Tech training for HVAC technicians. Additionally, he attended the Nexstar Network’s Super Meeting, where he connected with businesses interested in hiring him.
A year after his chance meeting with an HVAC technician, Rodriguez has his own truck at a residential service company. He is an example of the many potential PHCE residential service technicians that may never enter the industry without an invitation. He is just one representative of the many excellent potential technicians who we need to invite into our industry.
About #GivingTuesday and 92Y
92Y is a cultural center in New York City that, since 1874, has been bringing people together around its core values of community service and giving back, conceptualized #GivingTuesday as a new way of linking individuals and causes to strengthen communities and encourage giving. In 2014, the third year of the movement, #GivingTuesday brought together 30,000 partners in 68 countries and registered 32.7 million impressions on Twitter, with its eponymous hashtag mentioned 698,600 times. Since 2012, online giving on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving has increased more than four-fold, based on findings by Blackbaud and the Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, produced in partnership with the Case Foundation.
“We have been incredibly inspired by the generosity in time, efforts and ideas that have brought our concept for a worldwide movement into reality,” said Henry Timms, founder of #GivingTuesday and executive director of 92Y. “As we embark on our fourth year of #GivingTuesday, we are encouraged by the early response from partners eager to continue making an impact in this global conversation.”