A Story of Transformation: Give OUT Day 2017

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Image Description: A happy group of smiling people gathered around a laptop in the CAA Community Room.

On April 20, 2017, over 20 Team APIENC fundraisers and phone-bankers helped engage 248 unique donors and raise over $11,000 for GiveOUT Day. APIENC also placed second in the San Francisco Bay Area Small Budget leaderboard, earning a bonus of $3,000 and bringing the fundraising total to $14,675 (far surpassing the $8,000 goal)! Over 60% of APIENC’s annual budget comes from grassroots fundraising, and this year the funds will go towards powering our upcoming leadership development programs including the summer internship, our summer leadership exchange intensive, a high school training camp, and more!

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Image Description: A still capture of Sammie Ablaza Wills and MLin smiling on a Google Hangouts with multiple participants during the Give OUT Day Livestream.

The fundraising committee and a number of superstars helped make GiveOUT day happen: from to training our team of volunteers, to setting up the phonebanking HQ, to getting the word out through social media, and more! Michelle Wang, a Core Committee member, shared some reflections from their first GiveOUT Day fundraising experience:

“This was my first time actively fundraising for an organization and cause that resonated with me personally. I was definitely nervous about reaching out to people and made the commitment to participate as a way to push the boundaries of my comfort zone. Thanks to some incredible coaching, it also gave me an opportunity to reflect and refocus on the values that brought me to volunteer with APIENC in the first place: commitment to community, compassion, and self truth. I ended up doing much of my outreach in the days before GiveOUT Day, writing emails and sending text messages to family and friends. I only made a few calls on the day of the phone bank, but much of the anxiety and hesitation I had previously experienced had already melted away as responses from family, friends, and coworkers rolled in. The conversations that I was afraid of having never materialized and  I was incredibly humbled by the tremendous support that poured in and helped me surpass my fundraising goal.” – Michelle Wang

In case you missed out on some of the festivities on April 20 and want a chance to relive the magic, you’re in luck! It was APIENC’s fourth year participating in GiveOUT Day, but it was the very FIRST year of GiveOUT Day livestreams! Filmed and broadcast in real time directly from APIENC headquarters during the daylong phonebank, you can now catch the archives on the APIENC Youtube channel to learn even more about our summer interns, initiatives that are yet to come, what your horoscope means, and to catch a star-studded line up of APIENC guest stars.