Rotary’s Dozen Dinner Draw helps locals in need

Late last month, the Rotary Club of Ithaca announced the conclusion of its Fourth Annual Dozen Dinner Draw raffle, which raised $15,000 to support three nonprofit organizations and awarded gift certificates from local restaurants, theaters and performances to county residents.

Of the three nonprofits receiving $5,000 each, two are local — Family and Children’s Services of Ithaca’s KINECT program and the Alternatives Impact AFCU Small Business COVID-19 Relief Fund. The Digital Literacy Solar Project at the UNIFAT Primary School in Gulu, Uganda, will also receive $5,000.

The grand prize winner was Dale Flinn, a Rotary member from Lansing, who received 12 $100 gift certificates to restaurants in the Ithaca area.

For the local nonprofits, the funds raised through the Dozen Dinner Draw will go toward programs to help the county as it continues to struggle with pandemic challenges. With Family and Children’s Services (F&CS), its KINECT program provides supportive and educational services for children living with adult, non-birth-parent relatives.

Mike Ellis, youth and outreach director for F&CS, said the program was originally created in 2015 in response to an increase in children being taken care of by non-birth-parent adults, like grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends, partially due to the opioid crisis at the time making many parents incapable of caring for their children.

“The service model, one of the things that makes it so effective is it’s primarily an outreach program,” Ellis said. “So, kinship caregivers really have their hands full. A lot of times, they’re not expecting to be taking care of the kids that suddenly become their responsibility. So, they can use support.”

KINECT provides many supportive services, including helping families find grants for kinship caregivers and connecting families with other services like special education or mental health care.

While the KINECT program is still ongoing, it’s faced considerable hurdles over the past year. For one, the pandemic initially prevented KINECT staff from meeting families in their homes as they’d done in the past, moving consultations to virtual platforms like Zoom. While in-person consultations were able to resume once warmer weather hit, allowing meetings to be held in families’ yards, capacity has remained limited.

On top of that, the program is facing significant financial challenges. The program was originally funded with a five-year grant from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, which provided grants for kinship programs throughout the state. Now, the five-year grant cycle is over, and F&CS didn’t qualify for subsequent aid. So, the program’s funding has taken a huge hit, bringing staffing down to just one part-time kinship specialist.

Fortunately, the $5,000 from the Dozen Dinner Draw will go a long way to help keep the KINECT program afloat, Ellis said.

“Ultimately, we want to be able to expand capacity so that we can start reaching out to the community again, letting people know about the program,” he said. “Right now, we’re a little hesitant to do too much in the way of outreach about the program because we don’t have a huge capacity to take a lot more families. But once we’re up and running, then we’d like to serve as many families as possible.”

AFCU’s Small Business COVID-19 Relief Fund provides grants to small-business owners facing pandemic-related expenses, helping them purchase things like personal protective equipment and pay rent and other bills.

“In this uncertain climate with unpredictable revenue, micro-businesses are wary of applying for loans, especially when a small amount could make the difference between closing altogether or getting through the next few months,” according to AFCU’s website. “This grant program gives local businesses an opportunity to cover some of those expenses without worrying about any additional loans.”

AFCU Chief Experience Officer Chris Cain said the fund works in tandem with other services AFCU has provided to businesses throughout the pandemic, like its Business CENTS small-business development program. Cain added that the $5,000 from the Dozen Dinner Draw will go directly into the relief fund, further supporting local small businesses.

Cain, who is also a Rotary member, said AFCU’s focus on supporting small businesses is similar to the overall focus of the raffle itself. In past years, Rotary members asked area businesses to donate gift certificates for the raffle, but this year, the model was flipped. Instead, club members purchased the gift certificates from area businesses, totaling $2,900 in prizes for the raffle.

“For me, it was a fantastic package and a really fantastic exemplification about how not only the Rotary but how our community is there to help each other,” Cain said. “I just thought it was an amazing full circle that the Rotary was helping our small business development program through supporting small businesses in Ithaca.”

Juliet Gibbs, a Rotary Club member and organizer of the event, explained that, like AFCU, the Rotary saw all the hardships small businesses have faced this year and wanted to help.

“We discussed it and how the pandemic was going to impact the fundraiser, and what we did is we felt that it was even more important than ever,” Gibbs said. “We shifted it from asking for the support of the businesses to turning it around so that we were actually supporting those businesses that had helped us in the past.”

Another difference this year was the format, as the drawing had to be held virtually rather than in person. The drawing was held Feb. 10 at a Zoom meeting of the Rotary Club, which holds its meetings virtually every Wednesday at 12:15 p.m.

Gibbs said that more tickets were purchased by nonclub members than in years past, which she attributes to both the Rotary’s outreach efforts and the continued community spirit to support one another through this difficult time. And she and Cain both shared that Rotary Club members were just as enthusiastic for the chance to support the local community through the raffle.

“We weren’t sure going into it because everybody’s struggling right now with different things, whether it’s depression, mental health, lack of funds, losing their jobs, illness. There’s so many stresses right now on everyone,” Gibbs said. “But the members really went above and beyond to support this cause. We were really overwhelmed with the empathy and the generosity of club membership.”

Cain shared that sentiment, adding that members tried to make it an uplifting experience for everyone.

“It’s a lot of fun too, so there was a little bit of competition between Rotary members on who could sell the most tickets, and every single week, it was a topic of conversation for probably about three months,” she said. “That was a great way for Rotary members to build deeper relationships with each other to have a little fun and just to really have an impact on the community.”

To learn more about the winners, visit rotarydozendinnerdraw.org/beneficiaries.html. For more information about the Rotary Club of Ithaca, visit ithacarotary.com.