Coming off of a record year for donations, Malvern hopes 2021 will be just as fruitful. 

Giving Tuesday is traditionally the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and it is supposed to be a global day of giving. 

“Malvern’s Giving Tuesday started in 2012, and it just started as a day of doing good at Malvern Prep, and for the Malvern Prep community,” Ashley Breznicky, member of the marketing and communications team at Malvern Prep said.

Now, Giving Tuesday at Malvern is a fundraiser for important causes in the Malvern community. This year there are three different sections to donate to, two of them being restricted meaning that it will go to a specific cause, and one being open, meaning that it can go to anything that Malvern wants to allocate the money to. 

“One of the restricted causes is the Friars club, meaning that any donations to the Friars Club will go strictly to the Malvern athletics. Another restricted cause is the Keep Them In Blazers Fund, which allocates money to students who need financial assistance to attend Malvern,” Breznicky said.

The final of the three funds is not restrictive, and it goes to the Malvern Fund.

“The Malvern Fund is helpful because it goes to the areas of greatest need, such as facility improvements, new chromebooks, funding for the arts, and funding for some of the clubs on campus,” Breznicky said. 

The donations to the Malvern Fund can go to some of the clubs and opportunities that students really enjoy, such as the theatre society, the beekeeping club, and the zoo in the environmental science and marine biology classroom.

“These things really get the students excited,” Breznicky said. “Of course everybody wants to learn, but being able to learn while also having fun hands on, be it with the zoo or beekeeping, really makes Malvern special, and I think when the donors see that, they are happier to donate.”

Giving Tuesday at Malvern did not always have the publicity it has now, and the first year was a stepping stone for the future. 

“The first year we had something like eighty donors, which amounted to around twenty-five thousand dollars,” Breznicky said.

As more people learned about Giving Tuesday, the amount of donors rose, and in turn, so did the gross donations.

“The following year we jumped to about eighty thousand dollars. Each year it has caught on a little more, and this year we hope for about 250 donors,” Breznicky said.

The donations can come from parents, alumni, and even students, and the hope is that with more and more students attending and graduating Malvern, there will be a steady increase in the amount of donors. 

“We hope that the amount of donations will continue to grow as the amount of alumni increases, and one of the things we are focusing on is education for this event,” Breznicky said.

This year, the students in the Malvern media lab are making the informational videos that the marketing team use for the alumni and Malvern community with the help of several teachers, including Mr. Rogai and Mr. Watson.

“This is a way to show the donors how we actually use their funds, and I think it will have a positive effect to see the media lab create a video for Giving Tuesday, after Giving Tuesday supplied the funds to create the media lab,” Breznicky said. 

Giving Tuesday has been very beneficial to Malvern, and the marketing team hopes with more education on the fundraiser, Malvern can continue to increase the amount of donors and donations, even if the donations are as small as five dollars or as large as Malvern’s record of fifty thousand dollars.