Stephanie, Jasmine and Rosann pose for an #UNselfie

On December 2, 2014 the Reproductive Health Access Project (RHAP) participated in #GivingTuesday. #GivingTuesday takes place on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and is, in many ways, an antidote to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It was founded five years ago by the 92 Street Y as a way to kick off the annual giving season. After an incredibly successful first year, they teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to turn #GivingTuesday into a national day to celebrate and support charitable organizations.

RHAP participated in #GivingTuesday for the first time last year. Several generous donors stepped forward and created a 2-for-1 match for all donations made on #GivingTuesday, up to $1,000. The match inspired dozens of people to give and RHAP ended up raising over $3,000–in just one day!

This year on #GivingTuesday we received a $3,000 match from a group of clinicians in our our Family Medicine Reproductive Health Network. The Network is a group of over 600 primary care clinicians who are providing abortion, contraception and miscarriage to people in the United States with the least access to what should be basic healthcare. We are so grateful that these generous Network members stepped forward to create this $3,000 match.

On #GivingTuesday we sent an email to everyone on our mailing list, asking them to help us reach our goal of raising $3,000 in one day. We posted photos and updates on Facebook and Twitter throughout the day–including our own #UNselfie picture. Dozens of people made donations to RHAP on #GivingTuesday and by midnight we had hit our goal of raising $3,000!

Between the matching donor pool and donations made on December 2nd we raised over $6,000 to support RHAP’s work on #GivingTuesday. All of us at RHAP are so thankful for our amazing supporters. We have big plans for 2015 and will keep you posted on our efforts to increase access to abortion, contraception and miscarriage care.