October 2011 Satch Grant

The three grants chosen to receive our $500 Satch Grant this quarter were:

*Counseling and Education Associates for supplies for tobacco use prevention and cessation programs offered to individuals, groups, elementary and middle schools and classes in substance abuse treatment centers. 

*Operation Catnip in order to pay for sugeries for as many as 10 - 15 animals which will prevent the birth of up to 30 litters of kittens and/or puppies or potentially 2-300 additional animals over a years time.

*Joseph Williams Elementary to take their regular education third graders to see A Christmas Carol at the Hippodrome.

If you've been awarded a grant, checks will be mailed next week.  Please follow up by providing us with pictures of your progress towards your goal so that I can post them to this blog.

We were very pleased with all grant proposals and wish we could help more.  If you didn't receive a grant, please consider resubmitting for the next round of grants due on December 31, 2011.  And please stay in touch and let us know if we can help you achieve your goals in any other way.

July 2011 SatchGrant

Out of the 9 grants received this time, the three of us that review them each had good reason to approve almost all of them.  It's so hard to decide when our community is filled with awesome organizations working for it's most vulnerable members.  Once again it came down to which request was for a tangible effort and whether or not the money would go towards directly helping someone in need.  Ultimately we decided on awarding  our three grants to:

*Child Advocacy Center for microphone equipment necessary to conduct recorded Forensic Interviews used in child abuse investigations. 
*Peaceful Paths for gas cards to assist their clients in getting to mandatory appointments so they can more easily complete tasks to receive housing, child care and job referrals.
*The Children's Table in order to reach their goal of purchasing a refrigerator truck to enable them to accept donations of frozen meats, dairy products and other perishable food to distribute to agencies such as; The Upper Room, Interface, DCF, Meridian Behavioral Services, Jesus Christian Center, Dome of Resources, Honor Center for wounded veterans and Gainesville Veteran Medical Center.

If you've been awarded a grant, checks will be mailed next week.  Please follow up by providing us with pictures of your progress towards your goal so that I can post them to this blog.

We were very pleased with all grant proposals and wish we could help more.  If you didn't receive a grant, please consider resubmitting for the next round of grants due on September 30, 2011.  And please stay in touch and let us know if we can help you achieve your goals in any other way.

SNAP Program

In June 2010, Satchel's Pizza began participating in a SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) pilot program developed by the local Gainesville-Alachua County Hunger Abatement Plan in order to provide assistance in feeding a hot meal to local homeless residents.  The program is the first of it's kind in our region (it has been implemented in California, Arizona, Michigan, Hawaii and New York) that is geared toward providing that authorized homeless individuals are able to purchase a nutritious hot meal at approved local restaurants using a food stamp card.  We are very excited and proud to be a part of this innovative program coordinated by DCF's Community Partner Liaison Cheryl Twombly and John Skelly of Alachua County's Poverty Reduction Program.

In October 2010, Satchel's Pizza was invited to attend the annual Breakfast on the Plaza/Homeless Services Fair in order to accept an award for participating in this program.  We are grateful for the award and for the opportunity be a part of an effort to grant homeless individuals their just due.  The picture is of me being presented a 2010 Community Service Award for Outstanding Business. 

April 2011 SatchGrant

We received just five grant applications this quarter.  I'd really love for there to be more submissions.  Though that would make our job more difficult, it's good for us to be exposed to the need in our community.  And that has become the guideline for who we decide to award our grants.  Is the request need based?  Will it benefit the most vulnerable members of our community?  Please consider this not only when writing grant proposal's, but also when submitting them.  Help us understand your organization's specific need.  If you are able to do that successfully, you'll more than likely receive a grant from us.

This quarter we decided to award our three grants to the Displaced Homemaker Program, Buddy Runs Inc. and a teacher at W.W. Irby Elementary School.  The Displaced Homemaker Program offers a multi-faceted and comprehensive program of empowerment and employability skills to help eligible displaced homemakers enter the job market.  Their grant request focused on filling the gap in their clients computer skills.  With our grant, they plan to purchase USB drives as a tool in the computer education process so that clients have easy access to their resume, reference list, practice cover letter, list of local employer Internet sites, job listings and their computer lessons for practice and review.  Buddy Runs Inc. is a non-profit organization that was created to give those that are physically disabled an opportunity to have an experience in which they can participate in runs by being pushed in specially designed wheelchairs.  Their grant request was for cardboard boxes necessary to ship these wheelchairs to races being held in Florida and nationally.  And Ms. Lehtola at W.W. Irby Elementary requested a grant in order to set up a grade level appropriate literacy center at her school.  She will use the grant to purchase monthly books and CD's from Scholastic books to help improve her student's reading skills.

Congratulations to those who received grants this quarter.  Please send information and/or pictures of the program we're funding to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post it to this blog.  And, as always, we'd like to encourage those who didn't receive grants to reapply for the current cycle with the June 30, 2011 deadline.

Alachua County Victim Services & Rape Crisis Center

EHS Respect Your Date Contest

The Alachua County Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center spent a week in Alachua County public high schools raising awareness about sexual and interpersonal violence in teen relationships this spring by offering The Fifth Annual 'Respect Your Date Contest'.  They asked for a few gift certificates to give away to students who participated in the contest.  Thanks for bringing this important information to young people in our community.

Eplilepsy Foundation of Florida

Walk group with banner

The Epilepsy Foundation of Florida held a Walk For Epilepsy last year on April 25, 2010 at Kanapaha.  Satchel's offered a gift certificate to be offered as a prize for walkers and Julie Matheney, their assistant case manager, sent me a couple of photos to post.  Great job and thanks for all you do!

National Rebuilding Day

CH2MHill Group

The folks from Rebuild Together Gainesville requested that we donate pizza's to feed their volunteers on National Rebuilding Day on April 24, 2010.  Rebuild Together repairs homes for low-income families in Gainesville and the surrounding communities (click the link to learn more).  They were nice enough to follow up with pictures of the lucky work site that received Satchel's Pizza for lunch.  The Adopting Group for the Satchel's work site was CH2MHill.  Thanks for all the good work you do Rebuilding Gainesville!

Matheson Museum

artifact collection before

artifact boxes before

new supplies

artifacts in their new trays

artifact collection in the storage room after the purchase of new supplies

In January 2010 we awarded a SatchGrant to the Matheson Museum for the purchase of archival supplies for their permanent collection.  Chloe Richardson, their registrar and membership coordinator, forwarded me some pictures of what the collection looked like before and after they were able to purchase these new supplies.  I appreciate photos of projects we fund.  Thank you Chloe!

MSA Support Group

me, my dad and my sister

My Dad has MSA.  No one knows what MSA is.  Even Doctors have tried to correct patients of MSA by telling them that there is no "A" in MS.  It's a terrible disease.  It has changed my Dad, my Mom and everyone else who loves him forever.

Satchel was kind enough to allow me to reserve a month of ATM donations to fund the MSA Support Group.  If you have the time, please read the links below for information about this terrible disease.  Tell your friends about it too.  Maybe someday someone will find a cure.

Thanks Satchel.

Multiple System Atrophy - NINDS
Multiple System Atrophy - PubMed Health
Multiple System Atrophy - Wiki
Multiple System Atrophy - We Move

Total Donations

So after some calculations, I figured out that we donate about $500 a week to charitable organizations in either cash or food.  Wow - that's $26000 per year!  The annual breakdown looks roughly like this:

$14500 - ATM donations
$5500 - SatchGrant donations
$1200 - general donations
$4800 - gift certificate and food donations

I'm going to add a new column to display links for the organizations we've given gift certificates to so far this year.  We're so proud to be an integral part of our community.  Thanks for thinking of us.

Helping Hands Clinic

Satchel's is very excited to announce that we've decided to donate our 2010 balance of ATM Funds to the Helping Hands Clinic here in Gainesville, FL.  Zenta Auyong, the Clinic's Program Development & Volunteer Coordinator, was kind enough to meet Satchel, Caroline and me so that we could visit the clinic in order to learn more about its operations.  The clinic was established in 1989 and is run mostly by volunteers in order to provide physical and mental health care to homeless individuals in Gainesville.  After visiting the clinic, we all felt very certain that this was the best place we could contribute our remaining $6500 in ATM funds.  We'd like to encourage community members to learn more about this stellar organization. 

January 2011 SatchGrant

We're very enthusiastic about the new year of giving here at Satchel's Pizza.  However, this round of grant requests was slimmer than normal - we only received 6 requests.  Please try to spread the news about our various programs for giving back to the community.  We currently offer the SatchGrant program that gives up to three $500 grants per quarter, the ATM program where we give a portion of the surcharge to one organization per month and the remaining portion to one organization at the end of the year, and we also still offer gift certificates to organizations holding fundraisers.

It was still difficult to settle on awards for the January SatchGrant despite the fact that we only received a few requests. Ultimately we decided to award the SatchGrant to Childhood Development Services, Inc. for books for their Early Head Start Program that works to construct the foundation of learning for children through their first experiences with literature. We also awarded Partnership for Strong Families a grant for their financial literacy program entitled Fight for your Money that teaches eligible participants budgeting skills so that they can make better financial decisions.  Our funding will go toward paying  $100 toward the utility bill of 8 successful participants of the program.

We'd like to encourage all applicants that didn't receive a SatchGrant this time to reapply for the April 2011 SatchGrant. We will be accepting applications until March 31, 2011 and will offer up to three $500 grants after April 15, 2011. I would also like to request that those who did receive an award send pictures of their program's progress to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post them on this blog. Congratulations and best of luck to you all. We really appreciate all that you do for our community.