News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Valerie Williams, executive director at Hope Shores Alliance, on Monday shows off the free yoga mats the shelter gives to survivors of domestic or sexual violence.

ALPENA — Giving Tuesday Northeast Michigan, a 24-hour campaign from the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan that raises funds for nonprofits in the community, started at midnight and continues until 11:59 p.m. tonight.

Sixty-two nonprofits around Northeast Michigan, such as Habitat for Humanity Northeast Michigan, Sunrise Mission, and others, applied to be a part of the fundraiser to collect money for all of their different missions.

Christine Hitch, marketing communication director at the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan, said Giving Tuesday is a global movement and that the event is meant to inspire generosity in community members toward their local causes. She also said that this is the Community Foundation’s ninth year hosting the event locally.

“(Today) is going to be very busy,” Hitch said. “We’ll get some foot traffic, but the fundraiser is very social media- and internet-driven. Going online is sort of the primary way we get donations, so a big thing for nonprofits who applied is that you have to have an active Facebook page or social media page.”

Once midnight strikes from Monday to Tuesday, the Community Foundation’s Web page explains that the event page on its website will turn into a list of all the nonprofits participating, with a small paragraph describing what each organization’s mission is.

Any donors that strongly relate to a certain organization’s mission can donate to that organization specifically on the site.

“The money goes to the Community Foundation on behalf of the organization,” Hitch said. “After the campaign, the nonprofit gets 100% of its money that was donated to them, but they also get a choice. Nonprofits can set up a place to store their funds here, but, if they just want the funds themselves, we can cut a check for them. Any nonprofit that doesn’t have a fund with us automatically gets a check cut.”

Hope Shores Alliance, a shelter for survivors of domestic and sexual violence and one of the 62 participating nonprofits, set up a new theme for this year’s campaign: the Cost of Hope.

“Hope for a lot of survivors has a cost,” Valerie Williams, executive director at Hope Shores Alliance, said. “People leave things behind, there’s an emotional cost, there’s stress, there’s packing up and moving.The idea this year is that we want to make sure our services and our support are always free — they’ve always been free and they always will be free.”

Williams said that Giving Tuesday is a great way to collaborate with people in the community and that, rather than competing for everyone’s attention, the organizations share a “unified space” to ask for funds from the public.

On Facebook, Hope Shores Alliance posted its first promotional post about Giving Tuesday on Nov. 2. As the month continued, the nonprofit posted different goals and reasons to donate, with the latest post being a TikTok video made by the staff that gives five reasons to donate.

“We know that survivors pay a cost for hope and they leave so much behind, but they’ll never pay a cost for supported services at Hope Shores Alliance,” Williams said in the TikTok video.

One of the final reasons given in the video, as a joke, was that they also want to win Grant the Golden Goose, a prize given to the nonprofit that raises the most money.

Last year, Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan won the goose, and Hitch said organizations are excited to see who will win it this year.

Giving Tuesday ends at 11:59 p.m. tonight, with an announcement of who won Grant the Golden Goose planned for 11 a.m. Dec. 6 on Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan’s Facebook page.