Shop local, buy local, give local

This year students and community members made gift-giving a charitable affair, while keeping the benefit in the Palouse.
The Alternative Giving Market of the Palouse hosted its third annual event at the Prichard Art Gallery Wednesday featuring 27 local charities.
The market allows shoppers to browse charities, and select which they want to donate to. The donations are given in the form of a gift card that purchasers can give as gifts for the holiday season.
“The gift cards will say what they are for,” said Mary Shook, a market volunteer. “For example, it might say ‘a pound of nails,’ for the Palouse Habitat for Humanity, or ‘book for new baby,’ if it was for Gritman.”
The event began three years ago when co-founders Dianne Laursen and Renae Hill shared the mutual idea for a giving market.
“We met through Tom Lamar, who knew we had both said we wanted to do an alternate market for non-profits,” Laursen said.
Planning started in October 2009 and student volunteers pitched in to make it happen, Laursen said. Laursen and Hill hoped for eight non-profits in their first year — 55 applied Laursen said they picked 20.
“The core message is, ‘what does it really mean to do something for the community?'” Laursen said. “Instead of doing something that leaves the community, (like Heifer International) do something that stays. We say shop local, buy local, give local.”
Laursen also said Moscow is a tight-knit community, so an event like the giving market fits the spirit of the community.
The first year it opened the Alternate Giving Market raised about $8,000, and last year raised more than $10,000.
Last year was also the first year the market had an online presence.
“We realized not everyone could attend the market in person, so we had a student set up a website, and another student group did the advertising plan,” Laursen said.
The market is open online from Nov. 25 until Dec. 10, and provides a virtual market displaying all of the organizations that will be at the actual market.
“We wanted to make it as easy for the non-profits that are participating as we could, and as easy for the shopper as we could,” Laursen said. “They get to shop in one place, write one check, get one tax receipt and leave.”
Some of the organizations participating this year are First Book, which provides books to families with limited funds, Friends of the Clearwater, an organization that defends public lands and provides internships for students, The Palouse Choral Society and Christmas for Kids, a local charity that provides toys and coats to children.
“There are many opportunities, and we really encourage students to take the Palouse home at the holidays,” Shook said.

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.