Farmers can’t take sick leave, so when an emergency comes up, they’re sometimes in danger of losing a year’s crop, putting their entire livelihood in jeopardy. That’s when Farm Rescue steps in. Farm Rescue’s founder Bill Gross worked as a pilot before returning home to North Dakota, where his family had lost the farm he grew up on after a financial setback. In 2005 he started the nonprofit to provide help to farmer’s struggling with illness or natural disaster.
Farm Rescue has helped 250 families in North Dakota, South Dakota, eastern Montana, Minnesota and Iowa. The non-profit provides donated equipment and organizes its over 700 volunteers to make use of the seed, fertilizer, and fuel the families provide. Families can contact Farm Rescue for help, but half of the time concerned farmers hear about a neighbor’s troubles and anonymously recommend them for help. “We provide the equipment and manpower, and we get it done for them,” Goss told David Karas of the Christian Science Monitor. “We are basically a big, mobile farming operation.”
“We are helping to make it more likely for future generations of family farms to be able to continue,” Goss told Karas. “That is what I actually find the most satisfying.”
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Tag: non-profits
These Sisters Created an Incredible Place to Help Veterans
Sisters Melissa Spicer and Melinda Sorrentino joined the family business straight out of college—working along with their father and other family members to run Campus Hill Apartments in Syracuse, N.Y. When their father sold the business in 2007, the sisters decided to use their real estate and renovation acumen to benefit veterans, whom Spicer had been concerned about for decades. At age 16, she saw a homeless man holding a sign that said he was a veteran, and she told Marnie Eisenstadt of the Syracuse Post-Standard, “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. How can this be?'” Spicer began a charity that trained service animals to help veterans, and by the time the family sold their business, her non-profit needed more space.
So the sisters and other family members put up $700,000 to buy a vacant, squirrel-infested lodge in Chittenango, N.Y. near Oneida Lake and renovated it to serve as headquarters for Clear Path for Veterans, a nonprofit focused on all aspects of easing veterans’ transition back to the civilian world. Clear Path offers veterans a place to enjoy natural beauty, a dog training program, peer-to-peer counseling (the Wingman Program), acupuncture, massage, free meals and culinary training, a “Saturday Warrior Reset” program and more.
Clear Path serves 230 veterans each month through the help of volunteers. Spicer and Sorrentino do not take pay for their work at Clear Path, so most of the donations they receive go directly to helping vets. Spicer told Eisenstadt, “If what you hope to do benefits the greater good of the community, from beginning to end, never quit.”
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The Neediest Students Couldn’t Afford His Help, So This Test-Prep Prodigy Stepped Up
Garrett Neiman knows first hand the difference an improved SAT score can make—he increased his own SAT from 2000 to a perfect 2400, and began a SAT tutoring business while he was in college at Stanford. But he soon saw that the students who needed his help the most were those least able to afford it, so with co-founder Jessica Perez, he started the non-profit CollegeSpring in 2008, two years before he graduated. CollegeSpring helps low-income high school students—whose scores tend to begin at about 300 points lower than other students—through diagnostic tests, mentoring, and classes.
As Neiman points out in a column for Forbes, a few points difference on the SAT can determine whether or not a low-income student is accepted into a four-year institution, where statistics show they are much more likely to graduate than if they attend a community college. While in college, low-income students are less likely to be able to place out of entry-level courses through their SAT scores, making earning enough credits to graduate more difficult for them. People who earn bachelor’s degrees make an average of $800,000 more in a lifetime than those with only high school diplomas. He gives the example of a young woman he tutored named Neda, whose family was low-income and didn’t realize SATs were required for many college applications. Neda learned how important SATs are, brought her scores up and went to UCLA, where she’s now applying to medical schools.
How a Fishing Trip Can Change a Disabled Veteran’s Life
The saying goes that if you teach a man to fish, it can feed him for a lifetime. As the organizers behind the non-profit Heroes on the Water know, it can do even more than that.
Founded in Texas in 2007, Heroes on the Water aims to help rehabilitate disabled veterans by giving them relaxing opportunities to kayak and fish. The group now has 40 chapters throughout the country, and specializes in working with veterans suffering from PTSD and brain injuries.
Tom Welgos, who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, founded a chapter of HOW in Osceola, Fla., and runs regular monthly fishing and kayaking excursions for his fellow vets. “By meeting once a month it gives them something to look forward to and plan ahead for, which is something guys with PTSD need,” Welgos told Ken Jackson of Around Osceola. “In the kayak, you propel yourself, and then you fish, and the physical action of that is better for rehab than just standing on a boat or a dock and fishing.”
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