One Week -- $3,125 Towards Ending Homelessness

Last year, it took us approximately 1 month to raise $3,000...and we gasped across the finish line.  This year, we met our goal of $2,500 in three days and shot through $3,000 in less than a week ($3,000 mark hit on Sunday).  I don't know what exactly is happening here, but I love it.

So, what is the extra money going towards?  As you may imagine, those coming out of the woods do not have furniture, work clothes, pots, pans, etc.  When we were trickling in money after the $2,500 mark, that was the targeted goal.  However, now that we are brushing up on $1,000 over the goal, we can probably start talking about raising money for another house.

As I've said repeatedly, I want our accomplishment to stand for itself and will not be setting another goal.  But we have the entire month of July to play with and I want to see where we can take it.  It has been an extraordinarily fulfilling seven days and I can only hope the next 29 will come close.

Here are some neat things that happened over the weekend:

First, on Thursday, Columbia Patch wrote up a fantastic piece about our quick success that brought even more attention to the project, and probably helped us raise an extra $200 - $300.

THEN Dennis and Paul had County Executive Ken Ulman on their show and, despite having a laundry list of possible topics to discuss with the head honcho, were kind enough to bring up this Project.  Ken gave us the thumbs up and said, if I may paraphrase, that this was an example of people identifying problems and actually doing something about them instead of just observing and commenting.

TO TOP IT ALL OFF, the Huffington Post Blog twitter feed, with about 19,000 followers nationwide, gave us a shout-out:

So that totally happened.

I've been on a mini-vacation that was interrupted for me to come back to Maryland for a Board Operations Committee Meeting.  Yes, teleconferencing was an option, but...I've made my opinions on that kind of participation quite clear.  While I'm home, I wanted to drop in to give you an update and provide some delayed thank you's.  Without further delay...

Thank you to:

Alan and Summer Romack

Anonymous (In tribute to Alice "Boxcar" - "most generous person I know" [Seconded])

2DudesWho♥FoodBlog -- In a totally awesome way.

Jean Moon -- Check out the Philanthropy Study done by Jean Moon & Associates.  

Kirsten Coombs ("In tribute to a homeless man I've gotten to know lately & was surprised to find out was homeless.")

Frank Schippers (An old college buddy)

From those six wonderful people/families, we've raised $625.  Rather than petering out, we're gaining steam.