Francis House is an interfaith center designed to respond with compassion and justice to the spiritual, emotional, educational and physical well being of individuals and families infected, affected or at risk for HIV/AIDS.
We still need your help! Donations coming into our project have been slow. The economic crisis, while getting better, is having a major impact on our ability to raise funds for this project.
There is lots of competition out there from very worthwhile causes. The impact of food on one's health and nutrition is so important. Especially for those fighting HIV/AIDS. Many of our clients wonder where their next meal will be coming from. We are often the ONLY source of food that they have. We provide over 500 meals each month and over $2,500 worth of groceries each week! This food enables them to maintain their strength and energy to continue to fight this devastating illness.
Ever wonder where your next meal will come from?
Feb 16, 2011
First Project Report
By Joy Winheim - Executive Director
We made it! We did it! We got to the benchmark or 50 different donors and $4,000. It was hard, much harder than I expected. As I watched the leader boards of other projects I often wondered if we were out of our league. Francis House is a small non-profit that deals with HIV/AIDS. In our experiences, HIV/AIDS still has that stigma attached that sometimes make people afraid to give.... sad, but often true.
Facebook was primarily our focus of getting the word out there. Personally, I have over 500 friends and our agency another 300. I figured it would be easy... I just need all of them to give $5.00. Less than a pack of cigarettes. While I did have people donate, often more than the $5.00, I found that the people that gave have better relationships with me and probably gave because I asked and not for the cause itself. Maybe they got tired of seeing my daily facebook posts!
Since we hit our goal, we have had even a more difficult time. We have a link on our website, the link was mass emailed to over 5,000 members of the National Association of Social Workers and we have only received one additional donation.
We have an interview coming up with a local Tampa newspaper and will no doubt continue to talk about the need for nutritional food for our HIV/AIDS community. Francis House is most of ten the only source of food for some of our clients. The state of our economy does not help! If you have a desire to help, please clink on our link and continue to help us reach our goal!
