PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT Dear Friends of the Reel American Heroes Community, We are writing this VERY IMPORTANT message today to explain a few items to both the reader here and the general public. Our goals from this contact are to spread awareness of the foundation’s mission and to explain why we need your help in more extensive detail, this way each person can understand why we need the support that we do and so often ask for. A) Reel American Heroes Large Scale Events: Keep in mind that we do not ask of your time, resources, or money for our benefit. Each wounded Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, Marine, Disabled and Combat Veteran, volunteer boater (other than gas) and shore based volunteer does not spend a dime to attend and enjoy our events. It is all 100% free of costs to them. The organization pays for everything including food, fishing baits, terminal tackle, prizes, parking passes, launch fees, set-up fees, and overall marina use. That means at our events, we pull in exactly $0.00 dollars from individuals, sponsors or others that are in attendance. B) Donations: In order to secure these funds each year, we take in funds one of three ways – Through sponsors providing gifts such as tackle, baits and fishing accessories. Secondly, through personal monetary donations via pay pal on our foundation website. Lastly, through countless hours of fundraising in front of grocery stores and Bass Pro Shops stores regionally. Currently, board members spend countless full weekends of their time volunteering by standing in front of these stores. We do this well over 10 times a year, both Saturday and Sunday in order to bring in sufficient funds to make each tournament bigger and better for our wounded heroes. However, we are reaching a peak in our time availability due to the efforts it is taking to improve each year. All of us have full time jobs, families and other duties to tend to, which means we are beginning to compromise in those important areas of our lives in order to make the foundation succeed. We do this and sacrifice substantially larger sums of time these days due to the decrease in donations over the last year and standards we are expected to uphold. Our donations on the website have become almost stagnant, albeit the constant small group of proud supporters who send us random donations throughout the year. While we sincerely appreciate those that have come on board this year by donating resources and funds, we are still roughly $12,500 away from being able to host our Virginia event and running out of time on deadlines to make it all happen. If we can’t pull in these funds, we will have to trim costs by cutting back on prizes and fishing items our wounded heroes receive. We still need the support of our community and always will to thrive. C) Please spread the word: We ask that each and every supporter of the Reel American Heroes Foundation attempt to share information on the organization via their networking avenues. Whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, every time our name gets further out into the media, the better our chances are of succeeding in our goals for our wounded heroes. Please share statuses when able, discuss amongst friends or co-workers in military related conversations, or promote on any sites that you may own or have. We can very easily provide you with our mission statement, links to websites and logo. D) HELP our Wounded Heroes: We have many ways in which you can help the foundation. One would be to volunteer your time at one of our events. Another might be to follow the words of advice above in the, “Please spread the word” section. But, the MOST IMPORTANT way you can help our heroes in regards to our mission is to donate to the cause and MAKE these events possible. We do empathize with the community regarding the tough economic conditions, but in the same sense, we need your support more than ever due to that very reason. As little as $10.00 a month can make a huge difference for our events. As a matter of fact, that money adds up to $120.00 a year. This is roughly 1/3 of what it costs to supply all items necessary for one wounded hero at our event. As you can see, multiplied out over the 100 heroes we anticipate this year and we are at $36,000.00 JUST to ensure we have given all our heroes what they need to come and enjoy the event. That does NOT include items needed to provide our volunteers, staff and attendees with food, t-shirts, prizes, etc. We also have overhead costs like any other foundation out there to include storage fees, printing costs, website fees, etc. Currently, to manage and hold our two big events throughout the year we need to raise roughly $50,000.00 – 60,000.00. I don’t need to tell you, this is an ambitious task that we usually do not meet up until last day, each and every year. If you are a proud supporter of this organization please BOTH like AND share this message on your networks. Also, please comment and let us know that you have here in this post. If you or a friend/family member are able to donate after seeing this message, that would be the biggest help our wounded heroes could benefit from regarding today’s message. Thank you for all that you do for us and we are very proud of the amazing network we have built with our followers and community. You all are the greatest! reelamericanheroes.org/donations.jsp Sincerely, Ronald DeFreitas Executive Director Reel American Heroes Foundation [email protected]
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:09:43 +0000
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