In May, the Pittsburgh Foundation pulled the plug early on its Day of Giving, when a server crashed.
Foundation officials are hoping a do-over from 8 a.m. to midnight on Wednesday won’t result in any technical difficulties.
During the original drive, Texas-based Kimbia’s servers were overloaded while facilitating various fundraising events for 54 community foundations across the country, including locally.
Pittsburgh Foundation President Maxwell King said this time, things will be different.
“We have a new provider called CiviCore,” King said. “They’ve got redundant backup systems, we’re very happy with that. Another very important difference is the only community foundation doing a day of giving on that day with that provider on that day, will be us.”
He said a bare bones donation site was also created, in case of emergency.
May’s event raised more than $1 million. King said he hopes with Wednesday’s event, the total of donations reaches closer to $3 to $5 million – in line with previous years.
This year, the foundation eliminated matching funds, troubling some participating organizations. Those nonprofits will instead be eligible for about $200,000 in incentive money.
“We’re disinclined to continue a match that might grow and grow and grow and take more of the unrestricted grant making. But we will after Wednesday, have to make another assessment of how well the model works,” he said.
90.5 WESA and its sister station 91.3 WYEP are among the nonprofits seeking donations during Pittsburgh's Day of Giving.
