By Luther Shealy
1. Second Quarter 2024 Fundraising. Second quarter 2024 PHP donations received were $53,545.71 (USD), or 61% of our 2nd quarter fundraising goal of $87,500 (USD). Total donations from 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2024 are $162,514.68 (USD), or 46% of our annual fundraising goal of $350,000 (USD.
I am confident that our donor base will rise to the call and make the third quarter our highest fundraising quarter of the year. Without our awesome PHP supporters, we cannot achieve the funding needed to serve 42 combat wounded Veterans per year. If you have not done so already, please consider becoming a sustaining PHP supporter by signing up for a reoccurring monthly donation on our PHP donation website. Please donate today.
2. PHP (Canada) Update. Since becoming an officially recognized Canadian Charity in October 2023, PHP (Canada) is now fully up and operating. The Board of Directors is established, operating systems are in place and being improved, and the PHP (Canada) donation site is operating. If you click on any of the PHP “Donate” buttons you are given a choice to donate to PHP (USA+) or PHP (Canada). Donations to PHP (Canada) support Canadian combat wounded Veterans while donations to PHP (USA) support American combat wounded Veterans. Donations to PHP (Canada) are tax exempt as allowable by law to the Canadian Revenue Agency. To date PHP Canada has received approximately $16,000 (CND) in donations, which are rolled into the total donations received report in paragraph one above.
3. New Blue Chip Nomination Procedure. “Blue Chipping” is the procedure PHP Scholarship and Training the Hand attendees can nominate combat wounded veteran for a PHP scholarship after a thorough assessment. Previously blue-chip nominations were a phone call to Luther, now blue-chip nominations must be done via our blue-chip nomination form on the PHP website. This digitally captures all the nomination information and automatically populates our Scholarship application database.
4. 3rd Quarter Focus Areas: My 3rd QTR focus areas are fundraising and bringing in more volunteers to fill critical PHP positions. Thanks to our supporters we are doing very well with individual donations. I want to sustain this and expand into local fundraising and national corporate and foundational fundraising. To do this I need your help. Please see the related article in the newsletter on open volunteer positions.
5. June Dovetailing Fundraising Event. On 29 June 24 PHP held our first fundraising event, and it was a big success. Marc Spagnuolo (“The Wood Whisperer”) hosted Rob Cosman at his workshop in Wentzville Missouri for two dovetail seminars and a meet and greet social to raise funds for PHP. PHP alumni and key volunteers Brent Nelson, Ralph Sutton, and Shawn McDermott worked the event with Nicole Spagnuolo to make sure everything went off perfectly. PHP alums Trent Schuman and Jeff O’Conner assisted Rob at the event. 72 people attended the event which after expenses raised approximately $21,000 for PHP. Additionally, two seminar attendees purchased Rob Cosman workbenches and immediately donated them to the Bench Brigade, a $4000 value. Many thanks to Rob, Marc, Nicole, the PHP volunteers and everyone that attended the event.
6. Donations Update. Brent Nelson, our Donorbox fundraising manager, continues to make big improvements to our Donorbox donation management system. Since implementing Double to Donation so that PHP supporters can double their donation by leveraging employer matching funds, we have raised $300 with $9000 waiting to be processed. Brent is working hard now to onboard Donorbox’s Customer relations management software and to add a donation goal tracker to our donorbox site. He is also improving the interface between the PHP website and donorbox. Bottomline, Donorbox is our primary donation platform and Brent really has it working effectively and is constantly improving it.
7. Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) approved PHP (USA) as part of their 2025 campaign. CFC is the program by which U.S. federal employees can donate to charitable causes through automatic payroll deductions. We still have much work to do to complete the process but being approved is a huge jump forward. Big thanks to Ralph Sutton, our CFC manager for making all this happen.
8. Grants and Foundation Support. We are just beginning to dip our toe into corporate and foundational grants. Andrew Hilstrom has volunteered to lead this effort but we certainly could use some more help in this area, especially if you have experience with grant writing. Please email me at Luther.Shealy@ThePurpleHeartProject.org if you may be interested.