Giving Tuesday 2019

Giving Tuesday with SEEK Safely

The Tuesday after Thanksgiving (and Black Friday/Cyber Monday consumer madness), has become known as “Giving Tuesday.” This explanation on daysoftheyear.com describes the event as “a day that [is] all about celebrating the generosity of giving…”

For the past few years, we have invited the supporters of SEEK to participate in Giving Tuesday by making a donation to SEEK.

How does SEEK Spend its Money?

Asking for money is always an uncomfortable task, but as a non-profit organization, we rely on donations to keep going. We truly value your contributions, and want to be open about where the money goes. So on that note, here’s an overview of what we do with the donations SEEK receives:

  1. Produce content. Our staff member oversees most of SEEK’s content creation and sharing. This includes our social media posting, blog posts, and newsletters. This year we have been able to start posting on other sites, like Elephant Journal, which is proving a great way to expand our exposure and share our message. Our two articles have been read by about 15,000 people.
  2. Pay for advertising, especially on Facebook and Instagram. These posts increase our reach. Spending $50 to boost a post gets our message in front of about 5,000 new people.
  3. Keep our Board running. We have an annual Board retreat to plan our goals and approach for each year. Board members sometimes have to fly in to these events.
  4. Hold our annual fundraiser: each year, our Kirby Jam is our biggest fundraising event, as well as a way to share our message and express appreciation for our supporters.
  5. Continue the effort to pass legislation in New York. It’s a long process, but we’re still on it! We sometimes have to pay for travel, or materials like postcard mailers to send to legislators.
  6. Keep our website running. This is our biggest tool, a way to present information to the seekers we hope to keep safe on their self-improvement journey.

Overall, we are a fairly lean organization. We don’t spend a lot, and our biggest “product” is the information we share.

Ginny and George Brown, SEEK Safely founders, at Kirby Jam 2019.

Ginny and George Brown, SEEK Safely founders, at Kirby Jam 2019.

It’s not just about Money

Supporting SEEK is not just about clicking the donate button. If you want to support us but cannot afford a financial donation, there are other ways to help.

One of the biggest ways to help is by spreading our message. Whether you share our website with a friend who’s a self-professed “self-help junkie” or share our posts on Facebook, all of these actions help us expand our reach, which is huge! We measure success in how many people see our message.

Another gift you can give us is your story. We know it can be hard to talk about a time when you may have been duped by an irresponsible self-help teacher or resource, but you are definitely not alone. Your story helps strengthen our message as we reach out to other seekers, supporters, and lawmakers. So if you have an experience worth sharing, send us an email (info@seeksafely.org), or share your story on our SEEK Safely discussion group.

We really do appreciate these gifts as much as the monetary ones!

SEEK’s Purpose

But what’s the point of it all? Why do all this work?

As we continue to expand our reach and connect with more seekers, we have received many words of thanks. People have told us that they value our guidance, learn from the information we share, and feel validated and comforted by our efforts to put this information out there and normalize their own experiences with self-help–both positive and negative.

We’ve said it many times. Self-help isn’t just new-age, fringe stuff. It is mainstream and we are all consuming it, whether we realize it or not. It’s the motivational book a friend lends us, the inspirational Instagram account we follow, that uplifting magazine in the grocery store checkout line. The vast majority of the time, this stuff is really fine. But sometimes, these resources can lead to a deeper commitment on the consumer’s end. The victims of NXIVM did not think they were joining a cult in which they’d experience branding, blackmail, or sexual exploitation; they thought they were getting “executive success training” through a personal development company. Consumers need to be sure any self-improvement resource is legitimate and safe, or that it doesn’t ask us to commit more than we are able.

Every penny we receive helps us grow our influence, and we hope to keep growing more and more.

If charitable giving is part of your holiday tradition, we hope you consider giving to SEEK. We always, always appreciate any contribution you are able to make so that we can continue to do this work.

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Thank you very much! Wishing you peace and happiness as the holidays draw nearer. 

Thank you from SEEK Safely

 

 

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