Raising Up Stevens County Kinship Program

RUSC Kinship Mentoring www.rusckinship.org is a small community-based youth mentoring organization founded in Stevens County in 2015 with one full-time employee. For the third year in a row, on Give to the Max Day (G2MD), Stevens County residents will have the opportunity to rally with their local youth mentoring program to help them reach their fundraising goals from their electronic devices.

This year RUSC Kinship Mentoring is focusing their campaign around the “Why” of giving. They have been collecting selfies of community supporters—donors, mentors, advocates—holding signs that answer the question “Why Mentoring?” in five words or less. Leading up to Give to the Max Day, they are sharing the photos on social media and have created simple videos through free online programs such as YouTube Video Manager and PowToons to share their message through email, social media, and their website www.giveMN.org.

In 2016, they started the “Why Mentoring?” campaign which brought in $10,350 on G2MD. They had $5,000 in a donor match and hope to double that to raise $10,000 again this year. Their Executive Director, Andrea Dosdal shared, “We are definitely not experts at online fundraising, but we know that the other charitable organizations in our community are participating in Give to the Max Day, so we are too. It just happens that we were able to raise a boat load of money pretty easily and increase our online presence pretty substantially in the process. I would recommend every non-profit to participate in Give to the Max Day.”