At this time every year, I’m deluged with requests from deserving organizations and good causes of every imaginable type. I try to pick a few to support whose work I find particularly moving, relevant, or just plain necessary.
Even though I care about each cause I choose, because everyone is under the same deluge, I rarely forward these requests around. Every so often, however, one cause stands out from the crowd.
You can see where this is going.
At LightBox Collaborative, we’ve been lucky to work with the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, helping them build a social media strategy to complement their wonderful storytelling about the Fund’s beneficiaries in the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s been a very rewarding experience.
What Season of Sharing is doing—and has done for 24 years—is something simple and effective. It provides emergency financial assistance to Bay Area families experiencing an unexpected crisis.
Each year, Season of Sharing raises millions of dollars and works with community service agencies to distribute the funds to those in need. Donations go directly toward rent or a mortgage payment, or to food banks that provide more than 1.5 million meals each year for people who might otherwise go hungry. The stories of those helped by donations to Season of Sharing are remarkably touching and personal.
Because of the generous support of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and the San Francisco Chronicle, 100 percent of each donation goes toward keeping families in their homes and putting food on the table.
That so many of our Bay Area neighbors are in need only emphasizes how it is vital that we continue fighting for greater justice, equity, and fairness in our society. Season of Sharing may not address the underlying causes of poverty, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real people with real needs, who need our help right now. Especially during the holiday season, Season of Sharing provides a way for us to help our Bay Area neighbors.
For the past decade, my wife and I have called the Bay Area home. On its best days, we’ve seen the Bay Area succeed when it is united as a community—one that looks out for its own, that cares about the people on the margins of society, and that finds ways for neighbors to help neighbors. That’s the Bay Area community I want to live in and the Season of Sharing Fund is the kind of cause I want to support. I think you should, too.
▶ Donate to the Season of Sharing Fund and help spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.
(image courtesy Flickr user Flare, Creative Commons)
. . .
Heath Wickline is a raconteur at LightBox Collaborative. He wishes you a happy and generous holiday season.