5 Brooklyn Nonprofits To Support This Holiday Season

BROOKLYN, NY — If you’re like many of your Brooklyn neighbors, you may spend a good part of the holiday season with your credit card in hand buying gifts for family and friends. Coming up soon is a chance to give back to the local community.

Giving Tuesday, which in 2024 falls on Dec. 3, is a day dedicated to supporting nonprofit and community groups.

Since 2012, nonprofits worldwide have used the Tuesday after Thanksgiving to galvanize fundraising, rally volunteers and add momentum to their causes.

Maintaining funding is a constant challenge for many nonprofits that fill gaps and meet other needs in Brooklyn.

Here are five local nonprofits to consider getting behind on Giving Tuesday:

1. Brooklyn Book Bodega

Brooklyn Book Bodega provides free books to kids ages 0 to 18, and is on a mission to increase the number of 100+ book homes in the city and shrink "book deserts," which are areas of the city with limited access to libraries and bookstores.

Brooklyn Book Bodega, which launched in 2018, also hosts free literacy-based events and community programs.

The nonprofit says that early literacy is strongly linked to success later in life, and so they're treating access to books as a public health issue.

2. Magnolia Tree Earth Center

The Magnolia Tree Earth Center in Bed-Stuy was founded 52 years ago by green space activist Hattie Carthan as a community space that hosts programs like community baby showers, workforce development classes, cultural events and art exhibits, in addition to advocating for more green spaces in the city.

The center is housed in three landmarked brownstones in Bed-Stuy, next to the only landmarked tree — a Magnolia Grandiflora — in New York State. Donations go toward the center's programming, as well as maintaining the historic tree and brownstones.

3. RiseBoro Community Partnership

Based in Bushwick, RiseBoro Community Partnership is a longstanding nonprofit that addresses a wide variety of issues that low-income New Yorkers face, like housing insecurity, food insecurity, access to education, and much more.

The nonprofit, which has been around since 1973, is working "to build a city where your zip code does not determine your health outcomes, housing stability, or economic power," its website says.

4. Mixteca

Mixteca is a Sunset Park-based nonprofit on a mission to empower Mexican and Latin-American immigrants by providing access to services that address quality-of-life issues and help immigrants build sustainable economic development.

Mixteca, which was started in 2000 by Dr. Gabriel Rincón, helps address issues immigrants face in a variety of ways — through adult education programs and classes that teach English as a second language, health and wellness programs, and immigrant rights workshops, as well as free legal support.

During the pandemic, Mixteca also provided free meals, masks, rent assistance, burial assistance, and repatriation assistance to families in need.

5. Weeksville Heritage Center

Weeksville Heritage Center is a cultural center in a portion of eastern Crown Heights historically known as Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America.

The center was founded in 2005 — nearly two centuries after slavery was abolished in New York and Weeksville was established — and serves as a gathering place that hosts education and arts programming to preserve and engagement with the history of Weeksville and Brooklyn's Black history.

The center also features the landmarked Hunterfly Road Houses, which date back to the 1800s.

In addition to cultural programming, the center also plays a vital role in the neighborhood, hosting local town halls, community meetings and food and arts festivals. The center has also served as an election polling place and as a vaccination site during the pandemic.

Looking for something else? To find more organizations to donate to this Giving Tuesday, head over to Brooklyn Gives which has more than 200 local nonprofits to choose from.

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.