Pay It Forward, Sioux Falls, SD

Its founder, John Beranek, says:

We are still very active. Our group recently held another fundraiser. Our project has moved to splitting proceeds in thirds. One third goes to the organization we have team up with. (Champion Cheer.....a cheer squad) and one third goes to us to be used as we see fit to help others in need and one third goes to a collaborative PIF project we work on together.

We were challenged to come up with a new music review show focusing on families by a nun at a college near here as a way of thanking their community for support of the college. In February our event will be the kickoff of a major fund drive for another college. We will be paid for our performance with 100% of the proceeds going to others in need.

We are currently involved in a Ghost Christmas challenge and working with another group to meet the needs of 32 families/elders in our community. We are broken into teams and each team is challenged to collect items for the families. We have a huge food list, treat and wrapped age appropriate gifts. It is our first year and we put out a plea yesterday for our food items. I already have all of them covered.

Last year we focused on abuse, this year our focus is on elder care. With a generation of people who grew up during the depression we know these people rarely ask for help and may be starving in rural areas. Our group is working to create awareness and worked with the Meals on Wheels program and the Elder Day Care to provide respite for spouses.

Our group focuses on three areas to be part of the group.

1. A willingness to help others in need.
2. You must give of your own time, talent or money.
3. You have to accept a challenge to learn more about the issue or cause
and whenever possible personally experience the cause.

Our projects always have an element of education about a cause or the Pay It Forward concept.

No a single person involved in the group has taken any monies. This includes the musicians, volunteer or organizers.

We have not achieved it yet, but we would like to work towards having an event in which the food is also paid for so we can say all donations are truly 100% going to others in need.

On average one of our events involves nearly 30 volunteers.

Our biggest hurdle has been a desire to help people only as a last resort.Some of our group wanted to give advice or check to see if they have gotten help from somewhere else.

Some fundraising ideas:
1. Diamond donated by jewelry store. It is hidden in a piece of cake. Pieces of cake are sold at intermission for $5 or $10. Everyone waits until all the cake is sold. Large announcement and the person with the diamond is announce. Very funny.

2. Silent auction table
3. 50/50 tickets sold. Half of the proceeds goes to the cause and half goes to the lucky person with the right number.

Always have seed monies. We usually can afford to purchase what we need, but we always share our story and more times than not, someone helps us even more.

We still have our website: www.humanlikeyou.com
The focus of this campaign was on homelessness. All the agencies working on homelessness were able to put their wish list on this site.

John