286 Warm Coats for Ankeny!!
The Rotary Club of Ankeny contributed $2,000 to District 6000’s “Operation Warm Coat Project” and we have received word that our request for a matching $2,000 Community Service grant has been approved. We have been advised we may expect to receive 286 coats. This equals an average cost of less than $14.00 per coat for these brand new winter coats. The coats will be half girls and half boys of various sizes. The plan is for the coats to be distributed with the Project Fresh Start’s warm clothing distribution on Sunday November 2nd from 1:00-6:00 PM and on Monday November 3rd from 4:00-6:00 PM. The coats will be delivered to a central location in Des Moines where we will pick them up.and deliver them to the Ankeny distribution site which will be at 502 North Ankeny Blvd., in the strip mall with Papa Murphy's Pizza.
District wide this project has been a tremendous success. The goal was to purchase one coat for each of the 4,000 Rotarians in District 6000. The following update has been received from Deb "Crabby" Ockenfels.
"I sent the order for coats to Operation Warm yesterday afternoon and we made an official announcement last night at the Fall Training Seminar in West Liberty. The number of coats ordered was 8,790!!! Many people have said 'You're doing such a great thing!' I want everyone to know that we've been the catalyst, the order-taker, the nag and the cheerleader. We're all those things because of the fantastic response from all of you! If you hadn't done the generous, caring part you did, we wouldn't be doing the part we're doing! Thank you!
Special thanks go out to Don Patterson, who has been valiantly dealing with the deluge of checks, and also to Kris Ockenfels, who has been the wizard of the spreadsheet and my little bit of sanity during some of the crazy times. I also want to mention our Rotary contact at Operation Warm, Rich Lalley, who did say 'Holy shit!' when I told him we were at 7,000 coats. Little did he know! He's been wonderful to work with, set up the online donation site, donated to our district himself and arranged for us to have an extra $1000 donation through Groupon."
DG John and Crabby O.
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