Just Due

January 2012 Satch Grant

2012-01-13T15:19:00.001-05:00

The three organizations chosen to receive our $500 SatchGrant this quarter are:

*The Center for Independent Living for their group job shadowing event in order for their students with disabilities to take tours of the Hippodrome State Theatre and The Florida Museum of Natural History so that they can gain experience with jobs in the arts and communication field.

*The Sequential Artists Workshop to furnish their workshop so that they can provide a space to educate students in the art of visual storytelling, support creative investigation, exploration and excellence in cartooning and to promote literacy in sequential art.

*The Center for Breastfeeding and Newborns for their workshop series at their Eastside Family Practice Clinic on Waldo road in order for them to provide attendance incentive to African American women that attend their clinic.

Thank you all for your applications. We love the opportunity to be a part of such great organizations working for positive change in our community. The organizations listed above will receive awards next week. And as always, we encourage those organizations that did not receive an award to apply for our upcoming quarterly grant due on March 31, 2012.

October 2011 Satch Grant

2011-10-21T15:34:00.000-04:00

The three grants chosen to receive our $500 Satch Grant this quarter were:

*Counseling and Education Associates for supplies for tobacco use prevention and cessation programs offered to individuals, groups, elementary and middle schools and classes in substance abuse treatment centers.

*Operation Catnip in order to pay for sugeries for as many as 10 - 15 animals which will prevent the birth of up to 30 litters of kittens and/or puppies or potentially 2-300 additional animals over a years time.

*Joseph Williams Elementary to take their regular education third graders to see A Christmas Carol at the Hippodrome.

If you've been awarded a grant, checks will be mailed next week. Please follow up by providing us with pictures of your progress towards your goal so that I can post them to this blog.

We were very pleased with all grant proposals and wish we could help more. If you didn't receive a grant, please consider resubmitting for the next round of grants due on December 31, 2011. And please stay in touch and let us know if we can help you achieve your goals in any other way.

July 2011 SatchGrant

2011-07-22T15:01:00.001-04:00

Out of the 9 grants received this time, the three of us that review them each had good reason to approve almost all of them. It's so hard to decide when our community is filled with awesome organizations working for it's most vulnerable members. Once again it came down to which request was for a tangible effort and whether or not the money would go towards directly helping someone in need. Ultimately we decided on awarding our three grants to:

*Child Advocacy Center for microphone equipment necessary to conduct recorded Forensic Interviews used in child abuse investigations.
*Peaceful Paths for gas cards to assist their clients in getting to mandatory appointments so they can more easily complete tasks to receive housing, child care and job referrals.
*The Children's Table in order to reach their goal of purchasing a refrigerator truck to enable them to accept donations of frozen meats, dairy products and other perishable food to distribute to agencies such as; The Upper Room, Interface, DCF, Meridian Behavioral Services, Jesus Christian Center, Dome of Resources, Honor Center for wounded veterans and Gainesville Veteran Medical Center.

If you've been awarded a grant, checks will be mailed next week. Please follow up by providing us with pictures of your progress towards your goal so that I can post them to this blog.

We were very pleased with all grant proposals and wish we could help more. If you didn't receive a grant, please consider resubmitting for the next round of grants due on September 30, 2011. And please stay in touch and let us know if we can help you achieve your goals in any other way.

SNAP Program

2011-06-15T09:12:00.001-04:00

In June 2010, Satchel's Pizza began participating in a SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) pilot program developed by the local Gainesville-Alachua County Hunger Abatement Plan in order to provide assistance in feeding a hot meal to local homeless residents. The program is the first of it's kind in our region (it has been implemented in California, Arizona, Michigan, Hawaii and New York) that is geared toward providing that authorized homeless individuals are able to purchase a nutritious hot meal at approved local restaurants using a food stamp card. We are very excited and proud to be a part of this innovative program coordinated by DCF's Community Partner Liaison Cheryl Twombly and John Skelly of Alachua County's Poverty Reduction Program.

In October 2010, Satchel's Pizza was invited to attend the annual Breakfast on the Plaza/Homeless Services Fair in order to accept an award for participating in this program. We are grateful for the award and for the opportunity be a part of an effort to grant homeless individuals their just due. The picture is of me being presented a 2010 Community Service Award for Outstanding Business.

April 2011 SatchGrant

2011-04-20T14:57:00.004-04:00

We received just five grant applications this quarter. I'd really love for there to be more submissions. Though that would make our job more difficult, it's good for us to be exposed to the need in our community. And that has become the guideline for who we decide to award our grants. Is the request need based? Will it benefit the most vulnerable members of our community? Please consider this not only when writing grant proposal's, but also when submitting them. Help us understand your organization's specific need. If you are able to do that successfully, you'll more than likely receive a grant from us.

This quarter we decided to award our three grants to the Displaced Homemaker Program, Buddy Runs Inc. and a teacher at W.W. Irby Elementary School. The Displaced Homemaker Program offers a multi-faceted and comprehensive program of empowerment and employability skills to help eligible displaced homemakers enter the job market. Their grant request focused on filling the gap in their clients computer skills. With our grant, they plan to purchase USB drives as a tool in the computer education process so that clients have easy access to their resume, reference list, practice cover letter, list of local employer Internet sites, job listings and their computer lessons for practice and review. Buddy Runs Inc. is a non-profit organization that was created to give those that are physically disabled an opportunity to have an experience in which they can participate in runs by being pushed in specially designed wheelchairs. Their grant request was for cardboard boxes necessary to ship these wheelchairs to races being held in Florida and nationally. And Ms. Lehtola at W.W. Irby Elementary requested a grant in order to set up a grade level appropriate literacy center at her school. She will use the grant to purchase monthly books and CD's from Scholastic books to help improve her student's reading skills.

Congratulations to those who received grants this quarter. Please send information and/or pictures of the program we're funding to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post it to this blog. And, as always, we'd like to encourage those who didn't receive grants to reapply for the current cycle with the June 30, 2011 deadline.

Alachua County Victim Services & Rape Crisis Center

2011-04-01T10:03:00.002-04:00


EHS Respect Your Date Contest

The Alachua County Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center spent a week in Alachua County public high schools raising awareness about sexual and interpersonal violence in teen relationships this spring by offering The Fifth Annual 'Respect Your Date Contest'. They asked for a few gift certificates to give away to students who participated in the contest. Thanks for bringing this important information to young people in our community.

Eplilepsy Foundation of Florida

2011-03-31T09:49:00.002-04:00


Walk group with banner

The Epilepsy Foundation of Florida held a Walk For Epilepsy last year on April 25, 2010 at Kanapaha. Satchel's offered a gift certificate to be offered as a prize for walkers and Julie Matheney, their assistant case manager, sent me a couple of photos to post. Great job and thanks for all you do!

National Rebuilding Day

2011-03-30T10:21:00.002-04:00


CH2MHill Group

The folks from Rebuild Together Gainesville requested that we donate pizza's to feed their volunteers on National Rebuilding Day on April 24, 2010. Rebuild Together repairs homes for low-income families in Gainesville and the surrounding communities (click the link to learn more). They were nice enough to follow up with pictures of the lucky work site that received Satchel's Pizza for lunch. The Adopting Group for the Satchel's work site was CH2MHill. Thanks for all the good work you do Rebuilding Gainesville!

Matheson Museum

2011-03-26T09:27:00.004-04:00


artifact collection before


artifact boxes before


new supplies


artifacts in their new trays

artifact collection in the storage room after the purchase of new supplies

In January 2010 we awarded a SatchGrant to the Matheson Museum for the purchase of archival supplies for their permanent collection. Chloe Richardson, their registrar and membership coordinator, forwarded me some pictures of what the collection looked like before and after they were able to purchase these new supplies. I appreciate photos of projects we fund. Thank you Chloe!

MSA Support Group

2011-03-24T13:51:00.004-04:00

me, my dad and my sister

My Dad has MSA. No one knows what MSA is. Even Doctors have tried to correct patients of MSA by telling them that there is no "A" in MS. It's a terrible disease. It has changed my Dad, my Mom and everyone else who loves him forever.

Satchel was kind enough to allow me to reserve a month of ATM donations to fund the MSA Support Group. If you have the time, please read the links below for information about this terrible disease. Tell your friends about it too. Maybe someday someone will find a cure.

Thanks Satchel.

Multiple System Atrophy - NINDS
Multiple System Atrophy - PubMed Health
Multiple System Atrophy - Wiki
Multiple System Atrophy - We Move

Total Donations

2011-03-23T14:27:00.001-04:00

So after some calculations, I figured out that we donate about $500 a week to charitable organizations in either cash or food. Wow - that's $26000 per year! The annual breakdown looks roughly like this:

$14500 - ATM donations
$5500 - SatchGrant donations
$1200 - general donations
$4800 - gift certificate and food donations

I'm going to add a new column to display links for the organizations we've given gift certificates to so far this year. We're so proud to be an integral part of our community. Thanks for thinking of us.

Helping Hands Clinic

2011-02-11T15:53:00.003-05:00

Satchel's is very excited to announce that we've decided to donate our 2010 balance of ATM Funds to the Helping Hands Clinic here in Gainesville, FL. Zenta Auyong, the Clinic's Program Development & Volunteer Coordinator, was kind enough to meet Satchel, Caroline and me so that we could visit the clinic in order to learn more about its operations. The clinic was established in 1989 and is run mostly by volunteers in order to provide physical and mental health care to homeless individuals in Gainesville. After visiting the clinic, we all felt very certain that this was the best place we could contribute our remaining $6500 in ATM funds. We'd like to encourage community members to learn more about this stellar organization.

January 2011 SatchGrant

2011-01-20T14:54:00.001-05:00

We're very enthusiastic about the new year of giving here at Satchel's Pizza. However, this round of grant requests was slimmer than normal - we only received 6 requests. Please try to spread the news about our various programs for giving back to the community. We currently offer the SatchGrant program that gives up to three $500 grants per quarter, the ATM program where we give a portion of the surcharge to one organization per month and the remaining portion to one organization at the end of the year, and we also still offer gift certificates to organizations holding fundraisers.

It was still difficult to settle on awards for the January SatchGrant despite the fact that we only received a few requests. Ultimately we decided to award the SatchGrant to Childhood Development Services, Inc. for books for their Early Head Start Program that works to construct the foundation of learning for children through their first experiences with literature. We also awarded Partnership for Strong Families a grant for their financial literacy program entitled Fight for your Money that teaches eligible participants budgeting skills so that they can make better financial decisions. Our funding will go toward paying $100 toward the utility bill of 8 successful participants of the program.

We'd like to encourage all applicants that didn't receive a SatchGrant this time to reapply for the April 2011 SatchGrant. We will be accepting applications until March 31, 2011 and will offer up to three $500 grants after April 15, 2011. I would also like to request that those who did receive an award send pictures of their program's progress to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post them on this blog. Congratulations and best of luck to you all. We really appreciate all that you do for our community.

October 2010 SatchGrant

2010-10-19T12:38:00.006-04:00

Satchel's Pizza has successfully offered the SatchGrant program to schools and charitable organizations in Alachua County for 2 years. Because we are continually learning from this process, we've decided to make some adjustments in time for the 2011 SatchGrant. We've found that the most specific grant requests are the easiest to fund - ones that clearly state an attainable outcome. We're also interested in seeing growth in new program areas rather than contributing to normal operational funding for organizations. We've also decided to lengthen the time limit between SatchGrant awards to a particular organization to 2 years instead of just one. This increases the chances for first time applicants to receive an award. And finally, we've decided to add a third $500 SatchGrant per quarter in order to give funding to more organizations.

That said, once again it was difficult to settle on awards for the October SatchGrant. Ultimately we decided to award the SatchGrant to Florida Organic Growers for their GIFT garden program that provides sustainable nutrition asistance for at-risk populations, increasing local food production and beautifying neighborhoods. We also awarded Zeta Phi Beta Sorority a grant for their Stork's Nest program that promotes prenatal care participation and healthy behaviors during pregnancy to low income women through incentives and education. And we also decided to award a third SatchGrant to Mrs. Yassine's Pre-K ESE class at Lake Forest Elementary School for her Handwriting Without Tears curriculum in order to teach her students how to write successfully.

We'd like to encourage all applicants that didn't receive a SatchGrant this time to reapply for the January 2011 SatchGrant. We will be accepting applications until December 31, 2010 and will offer three $500 grants on January 15, 2011. I would also like to request that those who did receive an award send pictures of their program's progress to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post them on this blog. Congratulations and best of luck to you all. We really appreciate all that you do for our community.

July 2010 SatchGrant

2010-07-15T14:59:00.012-04:00

We've been accepting grant proposal's for more than year and a half and as difficult as it is to choose from among the many worthy requests, we've been able to fine tune our rubric. This time we awarded Christians Concerned for the Community (CCC) a grant for their request to build a wheelchair ramp as a part of their Fantastic Home Facelift program. We also awarded Micanopy Collaborators for Educational Excellence (MCEE) a grant for their after school program that provides free one on one tutoring to poverty level children. What we especially liked about these two grant proposals was their detailed request for funds for a specific item or program area. The proposals clearly addressed their need and made it easy for us to understand that our grant would help them to carry out their goal. Many of the other grants were compelling and we certainly would love to help more, but unfortunately we're finding that it's easiest to choose those who have the most clearly stated goal. As difficult as this process is, we're learning from it and it seems to be getting easier.

Congratulations to CCC and MCEE! When you get a chance, please send along some pictures or a video of your project so we can add it to this blog. And to those of you who weren't awarded a grant, please reapply for our fourth quarter grant and consider revising your grant proposal (if necessary). Grants are due September 30, 2010 for the October 15 award.

Sorry I'm so behind...

2010-07-14T13:03:00.002-04:00

Wow, this has been a crazy month and a half! On May 22, I discovered that 5 fraudulent checks had been written from our account and I've only just recovered from the backlash it caused. Anyway, forgive me for falling behind. We've just awarded a new set of grants so I plan to fill you in about it and catch up on past grants very soon.

Florida Organic Growers GIFT Garden Program

2010-04-23T10:41:00.001-04:00

Here's a video about the GIFT Garden program that was awarded our 3rd Quarter grant.

July 2009 - Bats, Gardens and more Teachers!

2010-04-22T15:10:00.009-04:00

Once again this quarter we had amazing grant submissions. We awarded grants to Lubee Bat Conservancy to help them with their annual Bat Festival, Florida Organic Growers for their GIFT garden program and W.W. Irby Elementary School for a classroom listening center to provide the basic tools needed to teach reading and writing for a challenging group of students. Lubee Bat Conservancy was kind enough to invite us for a private tour as a way to thank us for the grant. Oh what a fun day that was!

April 2009 - We love teachers!

2010-02-26T13:51:00.005-05:00

Second quarter 2009 was just as difficult as the first. We received 13 grant applications for the 2 grants available. Applicants were creative in their grant presentations. We decided to award grants to two teachers. Ms. Longshore at Lake Forest Elementary needed a classroom library to promote literacy for her 3rd grade students. Ms. Foust at Howard Bishop Middle School planned a leadership project with her 8th grade students to raise money for Peaceful Paths who recently suffered a devastating loss when their administrative building caught fire. We also provided food for a women's conference sponsored by IHN to raise money to help run their day center, take care of guest expenses and help parents get trained for work. I've included the video IHN sent with their application. Enjoy!

SatchGrant beginnings - January 2009

2010-02-19T12:26:00.014-05:00

2009's first quarter Satch Grant was an introduction to how difficult it would be to choose which organizations to award our grants. We received 23 applications for the 2 grants available. We ultimately decided to award grants to the Boys and Girls Club of Alachua County to help fund their Endeavor Baseball League for disabled children and the Gainesville Commission on the Status of Women to help fund their sexual battery conference aimed at raising awareness and improving assistance to survivors. We also decided to award a new teacher at Westwood Middle School an extra grant for her microbiology project on euglena (see picture above). Here's a link to the article written in the Gainesville Sun about the Endeavor Program.

cash contributions

2010-01-29T13:52:00.008-05:00

Since January 2005, Satchel's Pizza has donated $14826.07 in cash to various organizations. The breakdown looks like this:

2005: $1700
2006: $250
2007: $1191.37
2008: $3347.45
2009: $7237.45
2010 (so far): $1100

In 2008 we started donating the ATM fee from our new machine at Lightnin' Salvage. From that we donated $1727 in 2008 and $601 in 2009. In 2009 we introduced the SatchGrant program from which we awarded $4242.45 in cash (and $500 in food) that year and $1000 so far in 2010. Finally, in 2009 we acquired the ATM machine in the restaurant and donated $1219 in ATM fees. There's more to come, so stay tuned!

gift certificates for pictures

2010-01-27T12:16:00.001-05:00

We support local efforts to give to charitable causes in a variety of ways. Probably the most common way is by offering gift certificates to groups that are having fundraisers, meetings or raffles to raise money for their cause. I had the idea that groups who have received gift certificates could promote their event by sending an email with a picture so that we can post it here.

inception of giving

2010-01-27T11:52:00.000-05:00

Working here is the easy part - we have plenty to give and believe in doing so. The hard part is choosing from among those in need. We’ve narrowed it down to local non profit organizations for the Satch Grant. But it’s still hard. Maybe someday we’ll get to them all - maybe.