It seems the COVID-19 global pandemic has impacted all people, places and things. What I couldn’t have predicted, was that it is also impacting things that didn’t quite exist yet. The idea for re:give was born in February 2020, about one and a half months before Calgary shut down and closed its doors. It was at this same point (mid-March), we were in full force trying to launch by April 30. COVID-19 brought that all to a screaming halt and like most things, all work stopped for about a month. We were confused, we were stressed, and there were a lot of other things happening in our lives that prevented us from working on our project.




Laughing and pouting
helped us deal
with our stress..
As with most things, we adjusted. We realized that this “new normal” everyone kept talking about was going to be around for a while. This seemed to refocus us; we started looking at our concept for re:give as an idea that was desperately needed in a time when the average person had a lot less than they are used to, and those who were struggling to make ends meet before, well, they likely weren’t doing any better. What would be better for our community than to introduce them to a way to give back, without dipping into their already tight resources?





Sure, we had to make some adjustments – many of our initial fundraising ideas wouldn’t be feasible in a pandemic. We couldn’t start putting drop boxes in shops at local vendors, because folks weren’t going out much and when they did, we didn’t want to contribute anymore touch points. We needed to find a way to have people donate from the comfort of their home – mid-April seemed to bring on worldwide household reorganization and we wanted to make sure we could tap into everyone cleaning out their junk drawers! We quickly had to pivot to providing free postage for donors – easy for donors, easy for us to ‘quarantine’ packages for a few days and the best donation method for re:give during a pandemic. It definitely makes more of a dent in our bottom line, but it makes giving that much easier. Now of course I could be wrong because we’ve only received a package or two, but time will tell… If you have a great idea on how to collect gift cards in a safe manner- drop us a message and let us know!
What would make it easier for you to re:give?
