Everyday, Throughout the year, we serve over 3500 meals, we help over 1600 people

102

Years

in

Helping

Homeless

Abused

Alcoholic

....

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s ‘Emergency Food and Shelter’ Challenge Met

 Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries meets its Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s Emergency Food and Shelter Challenge. 

 In November, 2010, Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries was among 21 agencies in Southeast Michigan to receive challenge grant funds from the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan. 

 The Community Foundation Challenge – Emergency Food and Shelter initiative pledged up to $50,000 to support DRMM’s efforts to build its capacity to secure gifts from individual donors for emergency food and shelter services.  Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries will also be participating in a series of seminars throughout the year to help it build its fundraising capacity and organization leadership. 

To receive the funding, DRMM agreed to find reach out to new donors and to ask current donors to significantly increase their current donations to support shelter and food services at the Mission.  By mid-November, we sent special appeals to about 1,300 specially selected individuals.  They responded!  By January 1, we raised $120,000 from these donors, qualifying us to secure the $50,000 in challenge funds from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. 

 The Community Foundation explained their reason for offering this Challenge Grant in its Fall 2010 Report:  “The driving force behind the Emergency Food and Shelter challenges has been the board of the max m. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation.  Recognizing that widespread unemployment and housing foreclosures have swelled the ranks of those in need of services, the Fisher Foundation approached the Community Foundation and offered to help develop a program that would provide giving incentives to individual donors which would enable these organization to meet immediate demand.”  Among the facts provided by Feeding American and Forgotten Harvest and considered by the Community Foundation were these:   17 % of those currently seeking food assistance once held professional or managerial positions, 36% of households serviced by American’s network of food banks have at least one person employed and Michigan is ranked fifth in the nation and first in the Midwest for the number of homeless people.   

 Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries is extremely grateful to the donors who generously stepped up during this campaign to so quickly respond to the needs of their neighbors in need.  The additional revenues are projected to provide funding for 76,000 meals during the next year.  On an annual basis, DRMM provides over a million meals to hungry community residents.”