First International Jewish Giving Day a Record-Breaking Success; The Association for Jewish Outreach Professionals (AJOP) successfully completed an ambitious challenge to North American Jewish outreach organizations to raise $1 million in one day collaboratively today at 12 Noon EST.

Each organization set its own goal, and the sum of all goals was $1.1 Million. To participate, all organizations had to raise their goals in 24 hours, all or nothing. If one would not meet their goal by the end, then none of the other organizations would collect.

With less than an hour left, three organizations still had not met their goals. As 20 minutes were left on the countdown, two finished their goals. The last organization met their goal of $150,000 with only 9 minutes left on the countdown.

“Everyone I knew watching the campaign kept asking if there was an angel funder to help at the end. Would we front the money to the last organizations? It was gripping. People couldn’t turn away. They were literally stressing out and looking for ways to help these organizations find big donations in the final minutes. We look to engage our community in giving – this kept them giving, glued to their seats and even reaching out to others. No, we didn’t have any angel funders,” comments Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenbraun. “We were trusting each other, the support of each community, our sophisticated crowdfunding platform: charidy.com, and definitely G-d. I had no worries that together we could pull this off.”

To view the final totals for all organizations, visit: www.charidy.com/millionforoutreach.

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