Warren Gives … generously.

The eighth annual Warren Gives was so successful that the pool of matching dollars had to be expanded to keep pace with private donations.

On Wednesday, 1,907 donors gave a total of $590,304 to 101 non-profit organizations in Warren County.

“This is about a 30% increase over last year,” Community Foundation of Warren County Executive Director John Lasher said last week. “We exceeded last year’s donations by almost $200,000.”

The dollars came in early and often. “We surpassed 2019’s total at 5 p.m.,” Lasher said. And the generosity continued for five hours after that.

When organizers saw that the donations would be dramatically higher than previous years’ levels, they decided to adjust the matching fund.

Initially, there were $40,000 in that fund. That number fell too far below 10% of the total to be acceptable to those in charge.

The organizations that had provided the original $40,000 were the Betts Foundation, DeFrees Family Memorial Fund, Northwest Charitable Foundation, Sara Sokolski Memorial Fund, Superior Tire and Rubber Corp., United Refining Co., and the Community Foundation. Murray McComas joined those entities as a matching fund sponsor, Lasher said.

Five other individuals and families — Mark King, Emma (King) Golden, Ron and Barb Tubbs, the Hanna Family Charitable Fund, and Gloria and John Lasher — gave $1,000 each.

The Community Foundation board approved a second donation and brought the total to $55,000.

Those matching dollars will be split up and distributed to the organizations at the same percentage that each organization raised. A group that raised 1% of the $590,000 to $5,900 — would take 1% of the match — an additional $550.

In all, the event resulted in $645,304 that will soon be distributed to non-profits in the county.

The number of unique donors rose even more than the dollar amount, compared to last year. “All of the other good things that happened we think are a result of that,” Lasher said.

He was not sure what led to the jump in donations, but said the Foundation would analyze the numbers in the hope of finding out.

“We will do a survey to every donor,” he said.

What Lasher is confident of is that “people really value the non-profit organizations in Warren County and what they do for all of us.”

“It’s very exciting,” he said. “I get goosebumps now thinking about how generous the community is and was on Wednesday.”

The organizations will be hearing from the Foundation soon.

“We’ve told all the organizations that we will get the information to them by June 5,” Lasher said. That includes checks and the list of donors who gave to their organizations.