Give Where You Live

Give Where You Live is an initiative designed to drum up interest, visibility, and donations for small, local nonprofits. With an integrated campaign that included an animated anthem film, a website that doubled as a recommendation engine, social and a partnership with the NFL, we started a movement that drove generosity, donations, and community pride.

We wanted to bring people into a world of creative craft and charm, drawing attention to the importance of local philanthropy. Our message had to be engaging and optimistic, never preachy. So we developed a delightful animated world, populated with hand-drawn characters and original music to invite everybody in.

We focused on 6 key markets: large metropolitan areas with diverse populations driving innovation and culture—cities with active pools of local nonprofits, which could use a reprieve from financial hardship. We then partnered with Giving Tuesday to amplify our reach on a national scale.

Where this type of initiative is often presented through deficit framing, we instead chose to treat these nonprofits as cultural landmarks, generating curiosity and visibility for lesser-known local orgs. Inspired by travel recommendation publications like TimeOut, we set out to curate our own list of each city’s “best of,” driving recommendations, donations—and literally putting them on the map. By presenting the “places that do good” as the “good places to see and be seen,” we drummed up interest and visibility for these small businesses.

As of February 2023, the nonprofits that participated in the Give Where You Live campaign saw an increase in donations of up to 181%.