ALR Charity Ride Beneficiaries

I realize I'm behind on keeping things current.  I would love to say the reason for my absence is that I've been away on an awesome road trip, but that's not the case.  Just been busy here at work.  Anyway, I'm going to try and get caught up over the next few days with a few quick posts to let you know that the bike is still rolling up some miles.

As mentioned in an earlier post, our ALR chapter held our first annual fundraiser run back in June, and we hadn't done too badly for our first attempt at things.  The run was done, the proceeds were tallied...but our work wasn't done yet.  We still needed to give the money away...but who to give it to?  Well, we wanted to spread it out a bit, so we wound up choosing three charitable groups to donate to.

First, was Gold Star Mothers of Massachusetts.  Members of this group refer to themselves as "The group that no one wants to belong to."  Sadly, this is true, because it's members are made up of mothers who have lost a son or daughter in the service.  They offer support to grieving families, as well as foster awareness and goodwill toward the armed services through speaking engagements, rallys, and volunteering at VA hospitals.

The next group we donated to the Homes for our Troops charity, based locally out of Taunton.  This group was founded by a home builder who wanted to donate his time and experience toward building a home for a wounded returning veteran.  When he found there was no local organization for this, he created his own, and it's been off and running ever since.  All land, labor, and materials are donated, and they are currently on track to build 60 homes this year - simply amazing.

Lastly, we tossed a few ideas around for our third choice, but then someone made the suggestion that our donation should be made in the name of the Waltham ALR chapter, as they'd brought out a great contingent for our run, and it would be a great way for us to show them our appreciation.  So, we called them, explained what we wanted to do, and asked them who they would like us to make the donation to.  They were floored - they'd never heard of something like this before, and really got excited about the idea.  After doing some checking around, they felt the best decision would be to buy a bunch of gift cards to local pharmacies and grocery stores, to be given to the local homeless Vets organization, to help with purchases of much-needed food and medicine.

So now we had all our choices made, and the checks/gift cards were ready.  But rather than just mail them off, we asked if they'd like to come to our next meeting so we could thank them personally for all that they do, in addition to giving them our donations.  They were all more than happy to come on out and meet us and thank us.  (Of course, we had to take a group photo.)

It was the start of three awesome relationships, and we look forward to raising even more money for them on next year's run.

(We're beginning to reap some return-karma already; the Waltham chapter was so impressed with us, that they're throwing us a BBQ cookout in a week and a half.)

So there you have it.  See?  I actually do contribute some good to my fellow man.  (Once in a while...)

Next up; a quick blurb on a local charity run done for the father of some friends of the Sharon ALR.  Stay tuned...