Skip to content

It’s Match Day! Holiday Hands 2019!

By Together Rising | November 19, 2019

TODAY IS THE DAY!!!

 

Today, people log on and release outrageous, lavish, radical love by meeting the holiday needs of total strangers. Right now, we are matching 550 Holiday Hands families with givers!

 

Holiday Hands is an annual labor of love for Together Rising, but mostly it’s a miracle that YOU pull off every year. It is when we re-learn that small things with great love are what change the world. It’s when we PROVE what we BELIEVE: We Belong To Each Other. It’s when we show our own families what the holidays are really about.

 

We show up to help others – to change another family’s holiday. But somewhere along the way we realize that the family that is changed is our own. When we act out what we want to believe – when we not only SAY LOVE WINS but we DO LOVE WINS — WE BECOME THE CHANGE WE WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

 

We get to do that TODAY!  Today we stop wishing for a kinder, better, more generous world and start creating one. We match with a stranger on the Holiday Hands list and we say: Hey, friend. I’d rather my kids get three holiday gifts and your kids get three holiday gifts, than my kids get six gifts and your kids get none.

 

We let our families watch us do this. We show our children the families we’re helping.  We show our family — not just tell them – what love is. We need your help to pull off this miracle again! Today, let’s build the kind of world we want for ourselves, for our kids, and for each other.

 

If you are a giver who is not able to join us in family matching, please consider sharing this post and making a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation to support Together Rising by clicking HERE. We continue receiving and filling requests for holiday needs through mid-December – and we fill the needs of families all year long – so please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to help us continue to spread the love this holiday season.  100% of every dollar we receive from your individual donations will go directly to help other families.  We not only serve folks through projects like Holiday Hands and Love Flash Mobs, but everyday your Together Rising team works to match folks in need with your generous gifts. Thank you!!!

 

Donate to Together Rising HERE

If you are a giver who can join us today for Holiday Hands today, please, please read all the information and instructions below, and then go find your family match!

 

Directions for Givers:

To See Available Listings:

  1. Go to the Listings Page in the Holiday Hands section of the Together Rising website.
  2. Click on the box marked “Available.” A list of Available listings will be displayed.
  3. Once you have found an Available listing that you would like to sponsor, please go to the bottom of the page to the comment section to see if the need has already been met. The Together Rising team will be moving listings from “Available” to “Taken,” once the needs have been met, but there may be some lag time between updates. If the comments on the listing indicate that the need has already been met, please try to find another listing that is not yet filled. Continue to the next section to learn how to respond to a listing.
 

To Respond to a Listing:

  1. First, add a comment at the bottom of the listing stating which requested need(s) you would like to meet. For example, please indicate whether you are going to satisfy all the needs listed (up to $100), or whether you are going to fund a portion of request (for example, “I can provide the train your child wants” or “I can provide a $30 gift card toward your needs”).
  2. Second (and very important!), click on the Contact link at the top of the listing to send an email directly to the lister. Let the lister know what portion of the listing you would like to meet and ask for the address where you should send your gift. Please also ask the lister to write a comment on the listing acknowledging that you have communicated and confirm what you will be sending. Click here to see an example with comments showing how this conversation might play out.
  3. Once you see your gift publicly acknowledged by the lister in the comments, please go ahead and send your gift. (Please do NOT send your gift until the lister has posted your name in a comment on the listing — this will help prevent duplicate gifts if multiple givers comment on a listing.) Please try to send your gifts within a few days of your communication—the listers will be eagerly awaiting your response!
 

Directions for Listers:

How to Respond to People Who Want to Meet Your Need:

  1. Listers, after you submitted your listing, you should have received an email letting you know that the listing has been received and is awaiting approval. Included in this email is a link to your listing. That link will be the easiest way for you to access your listing once it is live. If you do not see this email, it is very likely that it is in your spam or junk email folder. Please do not contact us for help until you have checked your spam folder.
  2. Givers should respond to you in two ways, publicly in the comments section underneath your listing and privately through email. Please respond both publicly in the comments section and privately via email. To see an example of how this might look in the comments section, click here. In the comments section, please write the lister’s first name and what they are sending you.
  3. Please be prompt with your responses. Givers will not send their gifts until you list their name and identify what they are sending you in the comments section, so do not forget this important step.
  4. When a giver or givers have indicated their willingness to support your request, the Together Rising team will mark your listing as TAKEN.
 

A few final words for our Holiday Hands Participants:

  1. Please read and reread and rerereead the instructions before posting questions.  We get hundreds of emails each year asking questions that have already been answered in these instructions, and we’d love to spend the time meeting needs instead.
  2. There is a cap of $100 on requests so that more families may benefit from this program.  We are asking our givers and receivers to honor this part of the program. If a requester has already received items or contributions totaling $100, please find a request that has not been fulfilled.
  3. We approved as many listings as we possibly could. In fact, Together Rising is meeting the needs of XX families in addition to the ones you see listed by sending $100 gift checks to use toward groceries and basic needs. Some other listings were flagged by our system for a variety of reasons and need a bit more vetting. If you submitted a listing and received an initial confirmation message (but have not received another message letting you know that your listing has been enabled or that you will be receiving a gift card), please click here to give us a bit more information so we can look at your listing again. We carefully filter all listings for the security of our community, and the additional information you provide will help us in this process.
  4. If you submitted a listing but have not received an initial confirmation email or any email follow-up, please send us a message so that we can look into this for you. Our email address is [email protected], and if you write to us directly we will look into your listing for you.
  5. While the collection of Holiday Hands listings is over, the requests for help continue. We have not vetted and cannot vouch for requests made on the Facebook and Instagram pages and on the blog, so we are asking that no one attempt to make matches this way outside of the Holiday Hands program. Please honor our commitment to this community by bringing needs to us and by only answering needs through us.
 

Thank you, thank you, thank you — to the Givers, Receivers & those cheering us on –  for proving that Love Wins and We Belong to Each Other!!   Click here to get started!!

 

G & Together Rising

Posted in Blog Posts