Ken Kurtis
Contributor
In 1989, Chamber Day was created as a way of providing more secure funding for our Chamber. And since that time, we've come back to you annually to ask you to support your Chamber. We hope you'll never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad it's there.
A key component of our fund-raising efforts, especially the past few years, has been the Chamber Challenge. We “challenge” you to give a straight donation to our Chamber, and we hope you will then turn around and challenge your friends and dive buddies to match your generosity. And I happy to tell you that we’ve already hit $5,000!!!
We begin with a long-time stalwart supporter of our Chamber (they always like to be first out of the gate leading the charge to support our Chamber), Pacific Wilderness, at the $1,000 level. Pacific Wilderness realizes that, as a dive shop, our Chamber might be needed some day to help out one of their customers and they want to make sure we're available to do that. They are also joined at the same level by Jeanne Sleeper, who made her donation in memory of Dottie Frazier, a pioneering woman diver who recently passed away. (And how fitting that we’re announcing this on International Women’s Day 2022.) And our third donor at this level involves another woman, Marlo Wolf who is partnered with Jeremy Wolf and who annually supports our Chamber through the Jeremy & Marlo Wolf Family Foundation.
We also have also Silver-level donors ($500) in the persona of Chamber Director Karl Huggins. Karl’s donation - in memory of his mentor, Lee Somers - is a good reminder (as is Jeanne’s) that you can do a donation in someone’s memory or honor. We’ll list their name as well as yours. Joining Karl at the Silver level are longtime Chamber supporters Don Lake and Rex Uber. They both also realize the need for community support to keep our Chamber finally healthy. We have a number of $100 donations as well.
So we’re off to a good start and we’ve got a little over eight weeks to go. Last year was a record-setting year for the Challenge and hopefully we can set another record this year. And maybe we can springboard off of International Women’s Day to suggest that if you are a woman or if there’s been an important woman in your life (your mom immediately comes to mind), perhaps their influence can nudge you into making a Challenge donation today.
Who’s next??? Here’s the direct link to the donation page: https://usc.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cTKwbhUykVzL95Q
CHAMBER CHALLENGE 2022 - $5,000 total (Updated 3/8/2022 @ 3PM - first update)
New donors are in bold type and marked with an asterisk.
Gold ($1,000-4,999)
* Pacific Wilderness
* In memory of Dottie Frazier, WDHOF member & SoCal diving pioneer (Jeanne Sleeper)
* Jeremy & Marlo Wolf Family Foundation
Silver ($500-999)
* In memory of Lee Somers, PhD (Karl Huggins)
* Don Lake
* Rex Uber
Bronze ($100-499)
* Roger Carlson
* David Kasprzyk
* Richard Miller
* Cindy Shaw
* Mark Perlstein
