There are three ways to make donations to help those affected by the fire at OK Cafe. 1. The official portal for giving will be via the OK Cafe official website, okcafe (beginning Thursday, Dec. 11). All along, the team working on this has been in constant communication with owners Richard and Susan, to be sure we were in alignment with their goals and plan. We did not want to do anything that would cause additional stress for them. They have approved this plan. Additionally and unfortunately, there are criminal elements that prey on opportunities like this, thus, we wanted to carefully establish a credible protocol. We believe we have done that. When you visit this site, you will see a message at the top of the home page directing you what to do. One click and you will automatically directed to the donor site. To minimize any confusion, we have opted to leverage the donor site that the McColls kindly established yesterday - even though there is a fee collected by the owners of this site for this service (e.g. Crowdrise). Thank you McColls for your concern for the OK Cafe employees and initiating the early collection. A social media and full publicity campaign will officially go live tomorrow evening directing concerned customers and media inquiries to okcafe (lets hope the server does not crash)! Additionally, later in the week you will begin to see window signs appearing in area merchants telling the story about the fire and ways to help. Its at this point that I need to give a big shout out to Glen Jackson of Jackson Spalding - one of the nations leading communications firms - for their professional assistance, ALL PRO BONO. Glen would be horrified if that I just wrote this, but you need to know it. If ever your firm is in need of first class communications services, please consider contacting them. Their website is jacksonspalding In summary, while Richard and Susan do not yet have the final re-opening time estimate, the early information is pointing toward months, not weeks away. Think late springtime. He is doing his best to pursue the most expeditious path. Thus, gifts really matter as this is more than just giving for the Christmas season, its giving to help subsidize employee income, especially the tipped-base employees, well into the spring. Funds raised above what the is normal income for employees will go to support the local firemen since they are the real heroes in this story. Their rapid response, and professional work, prevented what could have been total devastation. 2. The Crowdrise site already mentioned ( https://crowdrise/christmasfundf... ) 3. Northside United Methodist Church giving.northsideumc.org/ For those of you who would like the donation to be tax deductible, this is the most certain way to go. Select Shepherds Fund and note it OK Cafe. Or send a check. Dr. Gil said that Northside would accept donations for this cause, and the Shepherds Fund is typically used for things like paying an OK Cafe employees utility bill, with possibly direct gifts to the employees, depending. The number of people and organizations eager to help in this situation is truly, truly inspiring. With so much community effort coming together, it became obvious that using the Food Security for America website was not needed. A huge shout-out to William Woody Faulk, who has spent hours and hours of time over the last couple of days to put this together. This is truly an example of this tremendous neighborhood and community. Well done!
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 15:15:03 +0000
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