Music & 9 Special Projects: the Care 4 Cortes Campaign

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Care 4 Cortes campaign officially ends today, but there is still a chance to donate this weekend.

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, Executive Director of the Cortes Island Community Foundation, explained “There's still a day or two where we'll leave up our Care for Cortes donation page on Cortes Foundation.ca.  you can  still see all the different projects that were highlighted. Give to them,   if you have the financial wherewithal.  It doesn't have to be a lot.  $20 to  something like MicroGrants for Neighbours or to the Cortes Death Caring Collective, makes a difference. If a lot of people do it, this makes a big difference.”

“One of our jobs as the Community Foundation, is to make it easier for organizations who are doing the work to get the funds that they need and to help those who have money to give do it in ways that they know will have an impact. I hope that some people will still be like, ’okay, this is how I'd like to say thank you back to this place that I visited or to this place that I call home.’”

Cortes Currents: What was the overall goal of Care for Cortes?  

Manda Aufochs Gillespie: “Our big goal was really to help people understand more of the projects and activities that are happening. The financial goal: We basically said to our partners this year that we were hoping to raise $500 into each fund.  Most of the funds raised that, but not all did. Some of them got a few thousand.  The ones that really did best through this campaign did their own awareness raising, that includes Cortes Radio and the Dr. Emily Ellingson Scholarship Fund.”

“I think we did a great job of having fun and ensuring that everybody who comes to Cortes in the summer begins to understand a little bit more of the often hidden work that goes into caring for this place that we call home.”

“We combined it with our Village Commons Music Series. We were like, ‘Okay, if we're going to be on the airwaves anyway, if people are going to be coming, could we actually just have fun with it? Could fundraising not be the kind of oppressive tons of work, big event hard thing that sometimes it can feel like I know to small nonprofits. Could it just be part of the fabric of the community?’ So we combined it with this beloved thing which is  the village commons music series, which we do with Folk University and the Radio Station anyway.

“There’s so many projects. We couldn't choose all of them. We knew we had  nine weeks  so we said, okay, we'll basically choose a fund a week during that time.”  

The Nine projects were:

The Cortes Academy Scholarship.  
Village Commons Music Series.  
Cortes Housing Society.
Dr. Emily Ellingson Scholarship Fund.
Climate Adaption Fund.
Social Profits Network,
Cortes Community Radio Society.
Cortes Death Caring Collective
And MicroGrants for Neighbors.