The Mexican social sector is very interesting, in many ways. Mexico has a strong history of private philanthropy but this is not necessarily reflected in donations to registered non-profits. Indeed the sector has really only been formalized as such during the past 30 years, and so there is a great deal more information publicly available in the US about nonprofits than is available to the public here.
Therefore it's harder to get a handle on just how many NGOs are currently active in Mexico and what their needs are. Most estimates are about 20,000 or 30,000 organizations, and judging by the response we have received to our initial call for activation partners for #GivingTuesday Mexico, there is significant interest in being part of a national campaign to boost donations across the board.
Participating in the international expansion of the #GivingTuesday movement is very exciting for us at Filantrofilia. Since we were given this opportunity, we have consolidated several dozen activation partners in Mexico, and everyone is very excited and enthusiastic to join in and raise the profile of the good work they are doing with people who might not necessarily be aware of the vibrancy of the nonprofit sector here. In Mexico, we are calling the campaign #DonaConConfianza 2013, and making sure that our base materials are adequately adapted to the Mexican context.
One of our activation partners is Huellas de Pan, a soup kitchen in Cancun. Being a world-famous vacation spot, Cancun has a large community of Mexican and international residents that are committed to improving the standard of living for the least fortunate in their community. Huellas de Pan works to provide food security for children in Cancun that wouldn't necessarily receive balanced meals, given their family resources.
Huellas de Pan's Board President is enthusiastic about the opportunity that participating in #GivingTuesday / #DonaConConfianza 2013 represents, given their presence on social media platforms. "Fundraising is one of the main challenges we face as an organization ... We have a relatively large Facebook following so will definitely mobilize our fans through FB, encouraging them to make a donation via the Filantrofilia website. We are able to process credit card donations but our website doesn't process these directly so we have realized that we need to link our own donate page to the Filantrofilia website and try to 'close out' more donations online."
She is more measured, however, when considering the wider implications of this type of global movement for the Mexican context. "It's good that Mexican NGOs can use concepts that have been proven in other countries, but I think we need to create a stronger Mexican culture of giving and tie it to very Mexican concepts of solidarity and relate it to the specific problems that Mexico as a country is facing right now."
Mexico has very high social media usage, especially among the millennial generation, so #GivingTuesday's strategy is a great way to make some noise and get people to pay attention here, and ultimately create a stronger culture of giving. We are very hopeful that expansion of #GivingTuesday to Mexico will mobilize the entire social sector to stand up, and for the rest of the country, and the world, to take note.
This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post in celebration of #GivingTuesday, which will take place this year (2013) on December 3. The idea behind #GivingTuesday is to kickoff the holiday-giving season, in the same way that Black Friday and Cyber Monday kickoff the holiday-shopping season. We'll feature at least one post from a #GivingTuesday partner every weekday in November. To see all the posts in the series, click here; follow the conversation via #GivingTuesday and learn more here.
And if you'd like to share your own #GivingTuesday story, please send us your 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com.