Prepare + Prosper — 5 Years Of the #GiveToGeeks Campaign
Today is Give To The Max Day in Minnesota, a day set aside to support Minnesota’s favorite nonprofits, organizations and causes. For the 5th year in a row I was lucky enough to team up with Prepare + Prosper to create one of my favorite campaigns of the entire year, the #GiveToGeeks calendar to support their GTMD fundraising efforts.
Every year over 500 volunteers help P+P with tax prep for over 10,000 community members and the calendar that we create celebrates the hobbies/passions/side-hustles/inner geek of Prepare + Prosper’s volunteers, staff and customers.
Over the years we have created so many fun images highlighting everything under the sun, from Star Wars and Star Trek (always) to Harry Potter fanatics to people with their hilarious pets to shoe/yarn/makeup/gaming addictions to hidden musical talents to ultimate sports fans.
The year I started photographing this calendar for P+P they had come off of a pretty hilarious Cats Doing Taxes video that they used as a campaign to fuel Give To The Max Day, raising $32,000. Over the last 5 years they’ve built huge momentum with this calendar and have a goal today of $95,000! You can help by jumping over to their page at GiveMN to help support their amazing cause of helping people with such an overwhelming time of their year and their initiatives to support the community in so many other ways throughout the year.
*UPDATE! P+P blew past their goal and raised over $100,000 during this year’s Give To The Max Day! If you’re a nonprofit I would love to chat about how we can use imagery to create an extra special project for fundraising!
Here’s a look back at some of the classic photos from this fun campaign, where these guys walked into the studio a little apprehensive and unsure, as we all are when a camera is pointed at us, and before long they were literally jumping up and down and screaming as loud as they could. Thanks so much to everyone that’s been a part of this campaign, and thanks to Prepare + Prosper for trusting me with the imagery for your fundraising efforts; it’s a highlight every single year.
I love the way that P+P has used these photos in their marketing efforts:
A little love for this project, from the community:
“True fact: I set up a reoccuring donation to @PrepareProsper one year when a friend was in their calendar. I planned to end it the next year, but their #givetogeeks campaign convinced me to keep it.”
“@PrepareProsper impresses me every year with their #givetogeeks campaign that manages to make taxes interesting!”