A Basketball and Turkey Trot Fundraiser
I wanted to share about a couple of fundraisers we had recently that meant a lot to All Things New and specifically I want to share about 2 people who have a specific skill and passion that they used to help our orphanage. I hope that I have not forgotten anyone or left anyone else out, but I wanted to highlight these guys and what they did to help the ministry of All Things New. In the next blog I will share about our big annual fundraisers in LaGrange and Jacksonville and how they helped us through some tough times this past year.
The first person and event I want to talk about is a friend of mine from high school, Carlo Heard. Carlo was a great athlete at LaGrange High and played basketball and football there. He recently put together a “reunion” basketball game between our class (1997) and the LaGrange High class of 1992. I was not able to be there, but I heard the event was a lot of fun and brought a lot of people in the community together. On top of that, and I did not find this out until after the game, donations were taken and any proceeds from the game were donated to All Things New! This event raised almost $1,000 for All Things New and was an incredible blessing for us at a time when we needed it. We want to say thanks to everyone who participated and especially to Carlo who surprised us with this generous donation.
The second person I want to talk about is another friend from LaGrange who runs a yoga studio (Inner Path Yoga Studio), Lisa Alford. I know my Mom and sisters have attended many classes with Lisa and our families have quite a few connections and have been friends for a while. Anyway, Lisa does a 5 mile “Turkey Trot” road race in LaGrange every Thanksgiving Day early in the morning. It started out as just a thing between friends and has blossomed into a pretty big event. Each year Lisa chooses a charity and asks for people to donate a small amount to the charity prior to running. This year All Things New was the chosen charity and this race raised over $1000 for All Things New. Thank you to everyone who ran and donated (Jess, Sophie, and I at least started the race) and especially thanks to Lisa for thinking of us and for the donation.
What a wonderful way to use the passion and the talent that you have to bless us, our children, and the ministry of All Things New. Hopefully this will inspire some of our other readers and supporters to step out and do something great for someone else as well. The truth is, as much as we appreciate the financial support, we also equally appreciate the time and effort that it took putting these events on because it shows people willing to selflessly act for others. These types of things not only bring in immediate support, but they also get the word out about our ministry to people who may have never heard of us before. It is so important in the non-profit world (and that is why it is so important to share, like, retweet, etc. our blogs and social media posts) to continually be in front of people and sharing our vision for the ministry. Carlo and Lisa, thank you so much we really appreciate everything that went into these events and it means a lot that you would do something like this for our family, our children, and for All Things New! Look forward to seeing where GOD leads in the future.