Whole Foods Lends Their Support

In an effort to help us raise funds for Cabrini Connections and The Tutor/Mentor Connection, Whole Foods is hosting a fundraiser called, "One Dime At A Time",for the months April, May and June, whereby each time a shopper brings his/her own grocery bags to a Whole Foods store, a dime will be donated to our organization. There are 5 Whole Foods stores participating and Dan Bassill and I will be presenting information to the Whole Foods staff the morning of March 31,2009 at their 30 West Huron Street store in Chicago. We would like to thank Katherine Melenovsky, Whole Foods Marketing and Community Relations Specialist for making this possible.

Toni

Help Cabrini Connections, and the Environment, One Bag, One Dime, at a Time

Whole Foods Market has selected Cabrini Connections to be the beneficiary of a new program designed to help our community partners raise needed funds.

The One Dime at a Time program provides an incentive to Whole Foods Market customers to eliminate single-use plastic bags and develop stronger communities all at the same time.

At the register, customers will have the option to receive a 10 cent per bag refund as cash back off their receipt or they can choose to donate it to that month's selected charity organization.

During April, May and June, 2009, Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection, is the charity of choice for five Whole Foods Market stores located in the Chicago Downtown area. These include the

Lakeview Store - 3300 N. Ashland, Chicago, Il
South Loop - 1101 S Canal St # 107, Chicago, IL‎
Lincoln Park - 1000 W North Ave, Chicago, IL (new store location will be 1550 N Kingsbury St, Chicago, IL)
Gold Coast - 30 W Huron St, Chicago, IL‎

Tell your friends about this. Every customer who goes to Whole Foods Market during this time frame will be a potential new volunteer or leader at a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, or at Cabrini Connections. Some may even become grant makers who direct corporate and foundation dollars to tutor/mentor programs.

Thank you Whole Foods Market!

ReBAG, and Remind Your Friends!

Whole Foods Market has launched a bag recycling program and during April, May and June, the charity that benefits from customer recycling at five Chicago stores is CABRINI CONNECTIONS.

Bring your bags back when you shop, and you can have 10 cents per bag donated to support our work. Now I've told everyone for years that I would stand on my head, or do anything else, to help find the money needed to assure that Cabrini Connections can continue to connect kids and volunteers.

With this recycling program, you don't need to do that. You just need to tell your friends and co-workers to shop at Whole Foods and ReBag for Cabrini Connections.

This is not only a way to raise some money. It's a way to build a whole network of new supporters for tutoring/mentoring. I was in the Whole Foods store on Canal Street last week. I had some great wings and took home some fresh flowers. It's a huge store! Hundreds of shoppers are going to the cash register and what do they see? The Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection logo.

That's the type of corporate advertising we hope will be duplicated by many companies. Every time someone looks at this we hope they are reminded to go on Google and look up "tutor mentor". When they do, they will find our web sites, and they will find Cabrini Connections.

However, they will also find our new Interactive Program Locator, which will enable customers from each of these stores to shop for what tutor/mentor program in the North, West, or South parts of Chicago they want to support with their time, or dollars.

If you can enlist your faith group, your fraternity, your company, or your sports team to find a way to raise money for Cabrini Connections or other tutor/mentor programs, and point to the Program Locator, each event will complement each other event. In total we'll raise much more attention, and recruit many more volunteers and donors, than we can with each program just promoting their own efforts.

I hope you'll make an extra effort to do this, just as I'm doing. Together we can make sure kids at Cabrini Connections, and kids in other neighborhoods, have tutor/mentor programs as we go into the 2009-10 school year.

One $5,000 donation at a time

After the July 16th Golf Benefit I wrote how it would take donations of $5,000 each from many different sources to keep the bills paid each month as we struggle with this terrible economy.

This week we've received the first of those donations, a $5,336.70 contribution from Whole Foods Market, which was the result of the bag recycling program run at five Chicago stores from April through June 2009. Every time a customer brought in their own bag for groceries, they could designate a 10-cent donation to Cabrini Connections! Thank you Whole Foods Market and your customers!

We've also continued to receive donations from veteran volunteers. Gita Rao, who was administrative coordinator from 1999 through 2001 send a donation of $300 from her father with a note saying, "My parents are in the U.S. for the summer and wanted to send something to Cabrini Connections before they headed off to Bangalore."

We've also received donations this week from:

Rachel Dziallo, former volunteer who has just moved to Austin, Texas
Lan Eng and Dan Bassill made donations via Facebook Causes

These donations are greatly appreciated and much needed. Please help us find our next $5000 donation. Help us find donations from friends, family, former students and from veteran volunteers.

Thank you Whole Foods Market!

Do What You Can

Martini Madness is just around the corner but there is still time to sell raffle tickets and get more people to join and/or sponsor us for this event. We are trying to make this our most successful Madness to date and are striving for a $10K event. We need your assistance to do this. Help sell a raffle ticket, come out and support and bring three friends or more! And don't forget, if you are a current CC volunteer for every guest you bring, a portion goes toward your total in the FUNdraising for Quarters competition! Speaking of which, volunteer AJ Tyson is still in the lead!! With first quarter winding down rapidly, there is still time to challenge for his spot as our top volunteer fundraiser. See me to drop off your donations! And extreme thanks to everyone who is helping raise funds by selling raffle tickets or inviting friends to participate in THIS Friday's Martini Madness event.

Thank you sooo much to the hardworking committee for this Martini Madness:

1. Karen Lobdell - (CC, T/MC Board of Directors)
2. Julie Hamilton - (Advisory Council)
3. Toni Pullen - (Staff Fundraising Support)
4. Cassina Z. - (Marketing, Fundraising & PR Events Coordinator)
5. Melissa Moore - Advisory Council (featured bartender)
6. Ryan Burke - CC Volunteer (featured bartender)
7. Rachel Lada - friend of CC (featured bartender)

And our EVENT SPONSORS for making this night possible:
North Shore Distillery
The Store
Whole Foods... without your generosity of the food, spirits, and location and tremendous desire to give, this would have been a much more chaotic venture. THANK YOU!

There is still time to sell more RAFFLE tickets. See me or another staff member any day this week, prior to Friday, if you need more. All raffle tickets and payments need to be turned in on Friday evening (by raffle close time at 9 p.m.) if you are attending the event OR by Thursday evening at 8 p.m. prior to the close of tutoring session if you CANNOT attend the event. If you have donations or raffle ticket money, you can give it to EL Da'Sheon or myself.

Help is always needed with fundraising. Visit the donor page to help.
We're always taking snack donations for our kids. See EL to donate.
All in-kind donations are accepted as well.
Thanks to the volunteers who've brought in snacks thus far, school supplies, yummy brownies and more. Please, keep the generosity coming. We appreciate every bit of help we can get.


Help us tell our story, increase our donations that come in from corporations through workplace campaigns Workplace fundraising campaigns are a great, non-intrusive way to help Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.
If you work for USPS, FAA, Abbott, Allstate, Microsoft, Sargent & Lundy, or ANY company that offers workplace fundraising you can choose your own charity! Both you and your co-workers can designate pledges to Cabrini Connections and in many cases employers will match your contribution.

If you are at a state university, or government office, you can find us in the Combined Federal Campaign Book on page 21 (#20937) under Black United Fund of Illinois. You can also give to us via the Black United Fund website under affiliated organizations. Find Cabrini Connections in the drop-down menu and make a one-time donation if you do not have access to a workplace campaign. Tell your coworkers about us and to support us too. You can also find us in the Community Shares of Illinois campaign website. You can also WRITE US IN as your charity of choice for United Way.

We understand that these are tough times to raise money and tougher times to GIVE, so we need to work harder and reach further than the normal thought process of fundraising. We need help from current students and volunteers as well as from our alumni and veteran volunteers.

Learn about workplace fundraising and other ways to help at http://www.cabriniconnections.net/donate/other_ways.asp
The options are there, please do what you can.