12.30.20
/ Community

12 Ways to Give Back in 2021

Through the years, you’ve found so many meaningful ways to support the clients of God’s Love. Through volunteering, donating, and simply acting as an ambassador, you have done so much to make sure we can always be there for our neighbors living with severe and chronic illness.

2020 was a year unlike any other, but what didn’t change was the dedication, creativity, and passion of our supporters! Here are some creative ways that you gave back in 2020 to spark inspiration for your service plan in 2021!

What’s an easy thing to do with friends that raises awareness and funds for God’s Love? A Facebook fundraiser! Every $10 you raise funds a delicious, medically tailored meal for a client living with illness. You can create a Facebook fundraiser for any occasion – why not start with your birthday? Start your Facebook fundraiser here.

Maintaining 6 feet of distance stop friends from coming in to volunteer together this year. Whether in the kitchen or in Client Meal Delivery, we welcomed friends to give back together. Sign up to volunteer with your friends here.

The Legacy Society is comprised of individuals who have chosen to support our work by including God’s Love in their estate plans. Planned gifts, including bequests, create an extraordinary opportunity to provide the much-needed resources that will enable God’s Love to help the seriously ill today and well into the future. Learn more about the Legacy Society here.

Hundreds of supporters joined our #WhoAreYouCookingFor campaign in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. They cooked a meal at home, took a picture of their meal, tagged the friends that they wished they could share it with, and donated the cost of the meal to God’s Love. So in a way, they were cooking for their friends and our clients, as well as for themselves. See the coverage of the campaign here.

Our volunteer Laura has delivered more than 600 cookies this holiday season as part of the Arst Cookie Bake, for which she opened her kitchen to orders from family and friends in exchange for donations to God’s Love. While in past years, she normally gathers with friends for a cookie baking party but, due to COVID, they had to find another way to celebrate the holidays. This year, that looked like  605 cookies, 250 pieces of fudge, 8 lbs of brittle, 38 boxes, 8 tins, and 60 yards of ribbon, all to raise funds for our clients! If you host a bake sale, please get in touch with our communications team at communications@glwd.org so that we can share your story with our community!

Curator and publisher Julie Grahame of aCurator and photographer Janette Beckman teamed up as soon as they saw the impact of the pandemic on the clients of God’s Love We Deliver. They gathered their extremely talented friends to host a photography sale in support of God’s Love We Deliver. Their first sale featured works by more than 20 artists, and it was such a resounding success, that as soon as it finished, they gathered to hold another sale. The second sale focused on photographs of musicians. Please get in touch with Special Events Coordinator, Julia Cordry, if you’d like to host an auction to support our clients at jcordry@glwd.org.

From February 4-16 God’s Love We Deliver popped up at the Bloomingdale’s flagship store. Bloomingdale’s is one of our oldest and most important corporate supporters; they helped our founder, Ganga Stone furnish our first kitchen in the 80’s and have continued to support us ever since. This was an incredible opportunity to talk to shoppers in one of NYC’s most famous institutions. We educated visitors about our work and medically tailored meals, while raising funds by selling glassybaby votives, AERIN candles, brownies, cookies, caps, aprons, water bottles and piggy banks.  If you have a space that can host an event for God’s Love, please get in touch with our Special Events Coordinator Julia Cordy at jcordry@glwd.org!

The pandemic did not keep our athletic supporters from sweating for God’s Love! While our events like the Race to Deliver and the Douglas Elliman Ride for Love went virtual this year, we had thousands of participants across the country, and the world running, cycling, triatheleting and signing up for zoom exercise classes to support God’s Love.  The Rye Country Day School cross country team, led by Yuto Abe, created their own fundraiser Wildcats Paving the Way, and other folks hosted races, zooms, and challenges, all of which you can read about on our blog. Thank you to all of our friends who went the extra mile (or 100) to support our clients this year!

It’s never too early to start volunteering and supporting your favorite charity! While we couldn’t invite our Young Hearts into the building this year, we created the cards of caring program so that young supporters could write messages from the heart at home. Our young and young-at-heart supporters decorated cards with caring messages and sent them to us in Soho. We then distributed the cards of caring to our clients, who have felt more isolated than ever this year. Send Cards of Caring. 

Some of our friends have a large audience. Some of these supporters have a captive audience of millions of people nightly or weekly. Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Lester Holt all spoke about our work on their television broadcasts, sharing the power of Food is Medicine and God’s Love with a national audience. If you have an audience and want to share our work with your community, please get in touch with the communications department at communications@glwd.org! Thank you!

New friend to God’s Love, Joanna Gilbertson started donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of her Granola company Outlaw Granola to God’s Love. This granola is gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free. Check it out on Instagram!

This year, our friend Cammie got in touch because her son, Zeke decided to donate their stimulus check to organizations that he cared about. We were so honored to receive an extremely generous donation from Zeke. Read his story on our blog about his love of God’s Love and his God’s Love Piggy Bank.

Thank You for all that You Do

And there are many ways to get involved this year. Perhaps you’ll purchase a Tile for Love, host a Facebook fundraiser, or find another way to give. Perhaps you’ll make birthday cards for our clients or sponsor something on our Wish List. Perhaps you’ll join us at Savor Pride or become a member of our Legacy Society.

Whatever your involvement, and however you choose to give your time, talent, support, and love, know that we are grateful for all of the many ways you help make our work possible. Thank you, from the bottom of our pots.

10.10.24 / Community

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