Community Happens Here receives $50,000 donation
Fundraising can be essential for any nonprofit. Fundraising allows nonprofits to be able to expand the space, provide more programs, and opens up other opportunities of growth. But if the realization behind the reason to donate is lost it can easily become a challenge to raise funds for these things to happen. We must understand the impact the donation has and why the people donating care about its mission. We must understand the donor.
Here’s one example. Community Happens Here has gratefully received a $50,000 donation from Ed Wells. Ed Wells peacefully passed away earlier this year at the age of 96. He left behind this generous donation because of his life long passion to improve the quality of communities and those who lived in them. Ed has also left behind a legacy of what a supporter should look like.
Ed was heavily involved with the organization WIN, Working In Neighborhoods. The mission WIN has of building sustainable communities aligned with Ed’s, too. He was an - advisor, advocate, and investor - to WIN.
Ed donated money, but it meant something a lot more than just the exchange of money. He cared about the mission to which he was donating. The same way he supported WIN, he decided to support Community Happens Here. He wants the mission of CHH to grow and see’s the purpose of it.
With his generous gift, he leaves behind a quote of how it should be used, “not a hand out, but a hand up.” He wanted his support to go to create programs and opportunities, not with hand-out services, but by meeting people “where they are” and helping them get to where they want to be. And he recognized this is being done at Community Happens Here.
CHH is meeting people where they are on the sidewalks and inviting them to come in to help get them to their goals. This is being done with the support of the community that CHH brings together, while simultaneously seeing and encouraging the growth of the community from this activity.
Ed Wells' grandson, Tony Wells, the Director of Development at CHH, has seen the impact his grandfather had on community and has that same passion his grandfather did for communities for Pleasant Ridge. Tony is invested into the community to continue to see the neighborhood be even more of the diverse place it is.
And Community Happens Here is asking you, members of the community, to match this generous $50,000 donation. It was made by one man whose passion was to see the improvement of communities, and who knew it would be best reached through CHH. Your donation along with Ed’s will ensure that the space and programming at Community Happens Here can continue to grow!