2026 Long Beach Gives raises about $2.6 million for 300 nonprofits, another record – Press Telegram

Long Beach Gives logged another record-breaking campaign – raising millions of dollars for hundreds of nonprofits over the last week.

Each year, Long Beach Gives brings local nonprofits together under one campaign to share their stories, bring in new donors, raise money and rally the community around the causes that keep the city thriving, according to the organization’s website.

Since its inaugural year, when the campaign raised about $800,000, Long Beach Gives has raised more and more money – with an uninterrupted streak of record-breaking efforts.

The eighth annual fundraising campaign began on Sept. 17 with a weeklong early giving period and culminated with the official Long Beach Gives Day on Thursday, Sept. 24, though, like last year, the 2026 donation window was extended through Friday.

And in all, the 2026 Long Beach Gives campaign brought in more than $2.6 million combined — from about 10,600 donations — for the nearly 300 nonprofits that participated. That not only broke the record of $2.3 million raised in 2025, said Long Beach Gives Executive Director Carrie Eldridge, but also surpassed the organization’s $2.5 million goal.

“Long Beach is special,” Eldridge said in a Friday morning interview. “We’re like the smallest town inside a big city. People see these nonprofits meeting (the community’s) needs and they really step up to support them.”

Long Beach Gives provides nonprofits with free access to a fundraising platform, tools and personalized training to help remove the financial barriers that often keep smaller organizations from growing their reach, activating their supporters, and building partnerships with local businesses.

Participating nonprofits run the gamut, from animal rescues to arts organizations, food banks to mental health services, and youth mentorships to environmental justice advocates.

Long Beach Gives also incentivizes those nonprofits to raise as much money as they can by doling out $12,000 worth in combined prizes to the best performers. The nonprofits are separated by the size of their budgets: Organizations whose budgets are under $100,000 are considered small, while medium-sized groups have budgets from $100,000 to $1 million, with large nonprofits surpassing seven figures.

This year, the nonprofits that raised the most money in each of those divisions were:

Small: The Pearl Foundation, which promotes and raises money for other charitable organizations, raised $46,000.
Medium: Rising TIDE at the Marguerite Kiefer Education Center, which provides afterschool education and development programs, raised more than $200,000.
Large: Assistance League of Long Beach, which has more than 700 members and works to transform the lives of children and adults through various community programs, raised more than $256,000.

The Assistance League of Long Beach, which has participated in Long Beach Gives since its inception. During the inaugural campaign, ALLB raised about $10,000. This year, the organization surpassed its $235,000 goal, said Oscar Reyes, the nonprofit’s director of donor relations and development.

The money raised this year won’t go to specific expenditures, Reyes said, but will be part of general spending.

The Assistance League has 11 programs, but its two flagships are Operation School Bell, which provides uniforms for Long Beach Unified School District students; and an orthodontics program, which offers dental care to low-income families.

A couple of last-minute matching donations pushed ALLB past its fundraising goal.

“It’s kind of nerve-wracking,” Reyes said in a Friday afternoon interview, “because people often wait until the last minute.”

But donations aren’t necessarily the biggest goal for the Assistance League.

That’s because the $255,000 ALLB raised during this year’s campaign isn’t much relative to the nonprofit’s $3 million budget, Reyes said. Instead, the true value of Long Beach Gives is in visibility.

“We’ve been around for more than 80 years,” Reyes said, “and a lot of people still don’t know we exist.”

Visibility, in fact, is part of Long Beach Gives’ mission – to help nonprofits expand.

One of its main goals, Eldridge said, is to provide participating nonprofits with the tools to continue expanding their reach and raising money throughout the year.

“They get these news donors,” Eldridge said. “They should be reaching out to them year-round; they should be showing them what they’ve spent their money on.”

While some nonprofits, such as ALLB, have participated in Long Beach Gives since its inception, the annual campaign also draws in new organizations each year.

One of those is Helen Sanders Cat Paws, a Seal Beach cat rescue and advocacy organization.

That nonprofit, said Director Deborah Felin, launched in 2010, in memory of Helen Sanders, a local resident who personally trapped, neutered, vaccinated and then released countless stray cats in Seal Beach and Long Beach – years before such programs became standard.

Sanders died in 2005.

Those who knew her spent the next several years trying to raise money to support the cats Sanders had helped that were still alive before they then decided to launch a nonprofit in her honor.

Helen Sanders Cat Paws is entirely volunteer-run, with a rotating roster of about 100 people, Felin said. Those volunteers help with various programs, from neutering and vaccinating to fostering cats to relieve the burden on overcrowded shelters – particularly Long Beach’s.

While that nonprofit participated in Long Beach Gives during the campaign’s early years, it stopped doing so because it often fell in the middle of other fundraising efforts, Felin said.

“I didn’t want to deluge people with fundraising requests,” she said, “especially when things are so expensive now.”

But this year’s campaign fell at a good time, Felin said. The nonprofit even participated in the Long Beach Gives Live! Expo & Festival at The Shell on Sunday, Sept. 20.

Helen Sanders Cat Paws raised nearly $40,000 – fourth among medium-sized organizations.

“It exceeded our expectations,” Felin said. “We participated in (the expo), which was really gratifying. It was great to interact with the community that way.”

As for Long Beach Gives as a whole, Eldridge described it as another resounding success.

“It has been amazing,” she said. “I’ve seen our nonprofit organizations take their training and really put it to use. It’s been beyond our expectations. The donors have really shown up as well.”