By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
The Heartland Community Foundation organized the first annual Give Fest on Thursday inside the Strand in Downtown Hays. As part of a community giving day, the event saw multiple non-profit organizations and city government departments participate in raising funds for various charitable causes.
Sarah Meitner, executive director of the foundation, led the effort to dedicate the day to giving back.
“We wanted to have a community giving day to encourage charitable giving to some of our local non-profit organizations by making a match pool available to incentivize giving,” she said. “We’re helping to grow their permanent endowed funds and give them money that they can use for immediate needs.”
Volunteers from United Way watch a wheel spin to determine a prize. 
Fifth graders stopped by the event to help raise funds. 
Members of the Youth Action Council play Cornhole. 
Sarah Meitner, Executive Director of the Heartland Community Foundation, checks people in. 
Hays Fire Department Chief Ryan Hagans hands a fire safety guide to a young event goer. 
A community giving day is hosted by the Heartland Community Foundation at the Strand for Give Fest.
The idea of having a community giving day in Hays was on the foundation’s agenda for a long time.
“We’ve wanted to do one for a while,” Meitner said. “We were able to use some money that came from the Patterson Family Foundation to help strengthen our math pool and have enough to do a match day.”
Meitner hopes that sharing this cause with others will raise as many funds as possible for the non-profits she hosts.
“We were up almost at $95,000 for the day,” she said. “So, hopefully, that trend continues. The match pool we made available is $150,000. We want to raise at least that so we can dollar-for-dollar match all of the gifts that have come in. So, anything that is raised beyond that $150,000 is also going to receive match dollars. It’s going to be proportionate to what’s raised. We want to make sure everybody gets their fair share of the pot.”
Aside from raising funds for charity, Meitner wants to inspire people to do their part in helping.
“Encouraging philanthropy and charitable giving is important,” she said. “We want people to get in that mindset that it’s up to all of us to do our part, to help our organizations, but we’re also educating that community and the young people coming through about what these non-profits do and who they’re serving. If we can model and show them that, then maybe we’ll plant seeds that they’ll take with them later.”