Fundraiser canceled and volunteer activities stopped
Bake Me Home, founded in 2008 just before the Great Recession, began with the mission of helping local families in crisis. Not only are we still doing that today, but the experience of building an organization during a financial crisis has prepared us to weather this devastating storm with all of you. The financial reserve that we worked hard to build over the past ten years is keeping us from turning away our staff and community in this time of need.
How we are serving local families, protecting volunteers, and caring for staff:
– Local shelters and food pantries will be shipped $20 Kroger gift cards in lieu of Bake Me Home Tote Bags (which require considerable volunteer labor and face-to-face contact) for the families we all serve. Thank you to The Kroger Co. for their $10,000 Gift Card Sponsorship to support our 2020 – 2021 programming!
– All volunteer activities inside our building and making outside deliveries are on hold.
– Bake Me Home’s tiny part-time staff is working from home and receiving full pay thanks to our Sustainability (aka Emergency) Fund and because our volunteers complete such a large percentage of our daily programming tasks.
– Our largest annual fundraiser, our April 25th Bash, has been canceled. We will still be honoring Pro Bono Partnership of Ohio and Jenny Meisman at our 2021 Bash. We are fortunate that our out of pocket expenses to date for this event are under $800.00. Thank you to our early Bash Sponsors who chose to convert their ticketed sponsorships into full donations. To further help, 20% of all of these sponsorship dollars are being used immediately to provide Kroger gift cards to an increased number of local families (from our annual goal of 900).
We know these are very stressful economic times. I am making the same plea that I made in 2008 when my two 7-year-olds decided that we should give out cookie mix to families moving out of the shelter where we volunteered… If you could donate $5, it would be a big help. The response then was overwhelming and changed everything for our mission. We hope this time will be the same. As the Cookiegirls once said, “A lot of $5 adds ups.” If you are able, please make a donation on our website www.bakemehome.org/donation.
And just because I know so many of you care, Amy and Emma are finishing their Freshmen years of college at home on “online college.”
Thank you for sticking with us. Please know that we are sticking with you too, and look forward to serving up warm cookies again as soon as possible!
Stay safe and healthy!
Alison Bushman, President and Cookie Mom
AND Your Whole Bake Me Home Team
