After a computer glitch on Tuesday prompted organizers to extend Colorado Gives Day, donors flooded the online charity blitz with nearly $12 million by the time donations closed today at noon.
The contributions to more than 900 area organizations in the second annual 24-hour event far surpassed the first year’s total of $8.4 million, in spite of — and in some cases, maybe even helped by — technical problems that for a few hours prevented online givers from logging into the web site.
“We had great publicity in general coming into the event,” said Dana Rinderknecht, the Giving First manager for the sponsoring Community First Foundation. “And then there was the extra stuff we got.”
The massive online effort hit a snag Tuesday morning, when its servers continuously crashed and rebooted, making it impossible for many donors to enter contributions. Some organizations eventually began taking donations directly, and at 2 p.m. the Community First Foundation announced that the hours of online giving would be extended.
“We did get a little more publicity,” said Rinderknecht. “The non-profits used it to their advantage, spun it, talked very well about it — they said, ‘We’ve got this extra time, let’s see how much more we can raise.'”
As a result of the technical problems, The Center, which provides support and advocacy for Colorado’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population, attracted an offer of matching funds.
Rinderknecht said that 927 of 932 organizations netted contributions. Among the big winners: Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver drew enough to build a house; Food Bank of the Rockies can distribute more than 780,000 meals and Rocky Mountain PBS more than doubled its original goal.
The most common donation was $50 but $100 donations ranked a close second — and those two amounts accounted for more than half the gifts.
Some non-profit organizations, like Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, saw no increase in total dollars over last year, but did see a significant rise in the number of donors in spite of the technical glitch.
“We were very proactive,” said development director Scott Anderson. “We noticed that the system slowed down dramaticaly in the early morning hours, and we communicated that to donors.”
By the time the online giving ended, MCA noted a 40 percent increase in donors, whose contact information will provide it with a broader base for future fundraising. Anderson also said that, for an online giving campaign, he saw an unusual number of repeat donors.
“It’s becoming a growing part of our end-of-year fundraising,” he said, adding that Colorado Gives Day accounted for about half of MCA’s December contributions.
Denver’s Clínica Tepeyac, which provides health care to the medically underserved, estimated that this year’s total would be slightly higher than last year’s — partly because of more media exposure.
But Sally Reed, the organization’s director of development, also figured that the added attention brought on by the computer glitch made more people aware that they could donate online.
“The exciting thing for me is it’s more donors who gave that way,” she said. “We had a small overall number of donations but many of these were from patients. That the working class poor that we serve would step up and make donations, that was nice. It’s going to be relatively small compared to some other organizations, but it’ll be very exciting to set some goals to double that next year.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com
