A Season of Reasons to Give
Giving is Changing | Volume 3
Like many of you, I’m genuinely looking forward to the holidays. It’s a time when we look to rediscover the shared traditions and things we love most, with the people we love most. We yearn to renew and strengthen our connections with our families and communities, and giving can be the most healing practice we can engage in after a long and incredibly busy year when our focus lies elsewhere.
It’s easy to get lost in the headlines and the sheer enormity of the challenges being faced by our Southern Arizona nonprofits, given the complexities of a changing tax landscape, and the desire to give a gift that best reflects your values to the right organization that will have the greatest impact. (Don’t fret – we’ve got a great guide to purposeful philanthropy written by Lily Graves of TCI Wealth Advisors to help you navigate those choices.)
For a moment though, let’s consider the wonderful impact on our own well-being when we choose to give. Here’s five great reasons to do so:
- Giving Glows You Up: Research at the National Institutes of Health showed that the same area of the brain activated in response to food lit up when participants in the study thought about giving money to a charity.
- Giving Lengthens Your Life: A UC Berkeley study by Doug Oman found elderly volunteers were 44% less likely to die over five years than similar controls who do not volunteer.
- Giving Improves Your Mood: According to the measures of the social capital community benchmark survey, overseen by researchers from Harvard University, those who gave contributions of time or money were “42% more likely to be happy.”
- Giving Improves Your Life: Giving and other acts of kindness mitigate against life on the “hedonic treadmill” in which we return to a set point of happiness after positive events.
- Giving Supports Better Physical Health: According to a paper in Health Psychology 2016, the more money people spend on others, the lower their blood pressure was two years later.
Speaking of giving, here’s some great news! In the past five weeks, we’ve seen Southern Arizona rally in dramatic fashion to address the SNAP challenges, with $111,400 in grants from local donors directed at community food support organizations. CFSA’s Board of Trustees has also moved to provide another $100,000 to shore up food security throughout Southern Arizona.
Please explore my Year-End Giving Guide below for even more reasons to give, along with other examples of how CFSA delivered on behalf of our vital nonprofit sector in 2025. You have a golden opportunity in these final days of the year to make sure that the organizations working on the issues you care about get off to the right start in 2026.
In Community,
Jenny Flynn
President & CEO
Community Foundation for Southern Arizona