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Philly tech: Get your checkbook out for #GivingTuesday

OK, fine, no one uses checks anymore, but you get the point. These are the Philly tech nonprofits and organizations on a fundraising push for the annual give-back holiday.

Toy cars line Carvertise's walls. (Courtesy photo)

From equity in tech to veteran entrepreneurship or the preservation of science history, local tech nonprofits are looking to rally financial support around their causes for Giving Tuesday.

Held on the Tuesday after every Thanksgiving, #GivingTuesday is a global rally to back nonprofits and social impact causes in response to the consumerism blitz of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

This year, Facebook and PayPal announced they’d match nonprofit donations up to a total of $7 million (limited to $250,000 per nonprofit or cause) for fundraising efforts held on Facebook, up from $2 million matched by The Gates Foundation on the social media site in 2017.

What’s happening on a local level? Here’s the list of local tech (or tech-adjacent) organizations with missions you can back today.

Coded by Kids

Recently, the tech education nonprofit set up shop at West Philly’s Cambridge Innovation Center and launched a project called Draft Studios, which hopes to give graduates of their coding program a chance to get real-world experience working on (and getting paid for) web development projects for local businesses.

“We’re doing great classroom work, but we wanted young people to have opportunities to work on real world projects, to be able to meet people at companies and learn about what it means to engage with an actual client,” said founder Sylvester Mobley. “We wanted to make sure there was a next step for students.”

For the give-back holiday, the nonprofit is raising $15,000. Chester County’s Turn5 and Center City-based Odessa are both matching donations up to $1,000.

Donate

TechGirlz

The nonprofit that focuses on tech education for middle-school girls is raising $10,000 to develop more TechShopz in a Box courses. The lessons have been taught in a handful of countries, reaching some 10,000 young girls.

“Many thanks to those who have donated and shared so far, helping us reach 10 percent of our goal before the official day of giving,” said in an email TechGirlz founder Tracey Welson-Rossman. “Today is the day we need all hands on deck to bring it home.”

Donate

Girl Develop It

The national nonprofit with Philly roots is on a funding push to help sustain its mission of giving adult women entry points into web and software development.

Donate

The ITEM

Peep the URL for The ITEM’s fundraising campaign and you’ll get the gist of their mission: The nonprofit delivers tech training to people of color (POCs) in a bid to bring more equity to tech.

So far a mostly self-funded organization, the organization is looking to raise $50,000 to pay instructors and run its programming.

Donate

DocumentCloud

Journalism-focused DocumentCloud, which recently merged with another nonprofit called MuckRock, is raising cash to help more reporters store, annotate and process documents used in reporting projects. Giving Tuesday donations will be matched by national nonprofit NewsMatch.

Donate

Bunker Labs

Bunker Labs is a national nonprofit with an active local chapter that focuses on veteran entrepreneurship.

Donate

Bonus: Generocity & Technical.ly

While not a nonprofit, our sister site Generocity is on a end-of-year membership drive to help support its year-round coverage of the nonprofit sector. Consider also becoming a Technical.ly member to back our reporting and convening of local tech economies.

Companies: Coded by Kids / The ITEM / Girl Develop It / TechGirlz

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