GivingTuesday is a global day. Your gift stays right here.

On Tuesday, December 1, people in more than 110 countries will do the same thing on the same day. They will give to something close to home.

That is all GivingTuesday is. One day, set aside after the shopping is over, to put money behind the thing you actually care about. Last year 38.1 million people in the United States took part and gave $4 billion, most of it to small organizations working in their own towns.

This year, let ours be the Meyer Art Center. Here is exactly what your gift does when it lands in Stanwood and Camano.

It puts an artist in a classroom

More than 2,500 students in the Stanwood-Camano School District go through the school day with no art class. Not a short one. None. The elementary schools have no art program at all, and the middle and high schools offer art only as an elective.

Afternoon of the Arts is our answer to that, and it is already running. This fall: eight classes over five weeks at Utsalady Elementary with teaching artist Shogo Ota, and homeschool students from Saratoga School Family Learning Center joining for the first time. This spring, Elger Bay, Twin City and Stanwood Elementary come on. After that, Utsalady Preschool, the middle and high schools, and the transition program for students ages 18 to 22.

It costs families nothing. The Olson Foundation carried it from one pilot classroom in 2024 to the schools joining now. The only way we take it to the rest of the district is with your help.

“More than 500 of our students had opportunities just this year to learn from professional artists.” — Dr. Ryan Ovenell, Superintendent, Stanwood-Camano School District

And it is not only an afternoon. Low-income students with arts-rich school experiences are three times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.

It keeps art happening all over these two towns

Open the events calendar for the next few weeks and you will see what a town with a working arts scene looks like.

Step Into Our Studios, November 27–29 and December 5–6, eleven artists opening five working studios on Camano Island and in Stanwood. The Camano Art Hop, December 4 and 5, 10am to 4pm, five venues along a two-and-a-half-mile stretch of the island. The Winter Festival and Maker’s Market at Arrowhead Ranch on December 5. A youth class on December 9. The Holiday Open House and Student Art Show at The Floyd on December 16.

Most of those are not our events. They belong to Camano Arts, to the grange, to the ranch, to the artists who open their own studio doors in the cold. The Meyer Art Center’s job is to keep the calendar, to show up, to send people, and to add to it — a family art night at the Stanwood Library, a mural at the skate park, a class where nobody has to have done this before.

That is what connecting a community through art actually looks like on a Tuesday. It is unglamorous, and it takes money.

It keeps the lights on

The least visible part of this work is the part that makes the rest possible. Somebody schedules the teaching artists. Somebody orders the watercolor sets and counts them back in. Somebody answers the email from a parent, writes the grant, books the room, and turns a good idea into a class a child actually attends.

Operations are not the exciting line on a budget. They are the line that decides whether any of the rest of it happens.

It builds the building

The Meyer Art Center is at the permit stage for its home at 10008 270th St NW in West Stanwood. That building exists because this community has already put $7.4 million behind it.

When it opens, there will be somewhere in this community where anyone, at any age, can walk in and make something — classrooms, studios, a gallery, and a door that is open to people who were never told they were artists.

Your gift is doubled on December 1

Meyer Art Center board members have committed $30,000 in matching funds. A gift made on GivingTuesday is matched while those funds last.

$50 becomes $100. $250 becomes $500. $1,000 becomes $2,000.

Three dates, one season

December 1 — GivingTuesday. The global day of giving, and the opening day of our year-end campaign.

December 16 — Holiday Open House and Student Art Show. 5:00 to 8:00pm at The Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center in Stanwood. Free to attend, student work on the walls, and a Fund-a-Need appeal.

December 31 — Year-end. The deadline for this tax year and for the board match.

How to give

Give online any time at meyerartcenter.org/donate. To give by mail, or to talk through a larger gift, email admin@meyerartcenter.org and we will help. The Meyer Art Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 85-1617284.

On December 1, most of the world will be giving to the place it lives.

Give to ours.