These dudes ended up raising nearly $17,000. Really cool story! Ryan sent you a thank you for donating to Shop With a Cat About a month ago I took to social media to share a vision that Cody Fletcher, Ross Elder, Skylar Thompson, and I had. The goal was to buy Christmas gifts for 10 kids in the Manhattan community. We thought 10 was a stretch but we decided to go for it. We asked for your help with raising money, and we weren’t sure what kind of support we would receive. To everyone that helped, you did more than step up. You helped make an incredible holiday season for so many people. We had a predetermined budget of $100 per child. With all your support we were able to significantly raise that spending limit. We also were able to shop for over 70 kids, a lot more than the original goal of 10. This was amazing but it didn’t stop there. We provided over 33 families with gifts cards for groceries to help during the holiday season. This brought us very close to the entire amount of money raised, but we had enough left over to make small donations to ‘Adopt a Family’ and the ‘Big Brothers Big Sisters’ organizations. The numbers and stats were remarkable, but they do not compare to the priceless interactions between the players and families. There were so many beautiful smiles on these kids’ faces and cheerful exchanges between the players and the kids. The kids might be young and not realize what’s going on, but they are learning that they are people who care. They are learning that there is good in our world. Although the kids might not understand, they helped us players more than we helped them. They helped us realize that the secret to living is giving. I can’t say ‘thank you’ enough. First, it starts with all the donors, this was all because of you and you should feel extremely proud. Second, the football players that served as the delivery men for this operation. Also, there was so much support behind the scenes from caring people. Thank you again. Thank you for caring, thank you for your generosity, and thank you for giving a helping hand. Ryan Hennington Happy New Year and Go Cats! |
