Providing Christmastime joy for families keeps Goodfellows donors coming back
It takes great people to make Goodfellows.
As in, the Goodfellow Fund, part of the Star-Telegram Charities Inc. The program’s project this year is to distribute $50 gift cards for shoes and clothing to up to 12,000 needy children this holiday season.
Doing so takes money. And that’s where so many donors to the Goodfellow Fund come in. Because of their generosity the program has been helping needy children and families in Tarrant County since 1912.
But with so many great charity organizations out there, what is it that keeps bringing them back to the Goodfellow Fund?
“Helping children has just been in my heart because I know how it feels for a child to not have Christmas,” longtime donor Bonnie Soyster said.
Julie Hedden is both a longtime donor and a volunteer with the organization for the past five years since her retirement. She learned about the program through articles in the Star-Telegram and immediately wanted to do all she could to help.
“I felt it was a great opportunity to give to the community in place of a lot of trivial gifts to my colleagues,” she said.
Hedden started as a volunteer doing data entry for Goodfellows. She has now progressed to interviewing candidates, which means she gets to hand families their gift cards directly, something she loves doing.
She added that it is Goodfellows’ specific goal of providing local children clothes and shoes at Christmastime that sets the organization part.
“Gift cards go directly to parents, giving them the opportunity to select appropriate gifts for their children,” she said.
Soyster said she believes it is the “hands on by volunteers of Fort Worth people that care” that makes Goodfellows special.
Mary Kathryn Anderson and her husband, Warren Gould, are, likewise longtime donors and volunteers. She recalled growing up in Fort Worth and the Goodfellow Fund being part of the holiday season.
“I also remember that in the 50s and 60s Amon Carter was very much the face of Fort Worth. He used his newspaper to remind its citizens that the Christmas season means more than presents for family and a feast. He knew that many Fort Worth citizens did not have enough to eat and that there were children that, despite the cheer shown in his newspapers and in stores, would go to bed hungry and wake up to just another day that lacked any joy,” she said.
“Mr. Carter began the Goodfellow Fund, not only to help those less fortunate, but to make his readers understand that their fellow citizens could be helped by monetary donations to Goodfellows. It seemed that it was our civic duty. I am sure that our elementary school probably collected money for Goodfellows each year.”
Gould grew up in Shreveport and recalled The Shreveport Times/Journal having a similar program. While he did not have the financial wherewithal to contribute at that time, he said he was always aware that the citizens served by that program cared about their less fortunate neighbors and were willing to help. He vowed to help as soon as he was able, and now he contributes annually in keeping that promise.
“For us, donating to the fund and then meeting personally with applicants, many of whom appear with their eligible children since no child care is available, ensures that through interviews and reviews of supporting documents, that the applicants are indeed eligible,” he said. “This gives us a direct way of helping and being a part of the Christmas season. In all of the interviews my wife and I have had, we have never had to turn an applicant away because they did not qualify.”
Gould added their involvement with the Goodfellow Fund marks the beginning of the of the holiday season.
“It has made it so much more personal for us,” he said.
Goodfellow Fund Executive Director Richard Greene noted that while the program has so many donors it can count on year after year, Fort Worth is growing in population at a rapid rate (over 938,000 residents compared to just over 741,000 in 2010). That means more potential volunteers, along with potentially more children needing help.
And he said now is the time to tell those folks about the Goodfellow Fund and bring them onboard.
“There are so many new residents of Tarrant County that are not familiar with the Goodfellow Fund. ‘Not Familiar!’ ‘Never heard of it’ is something I hear every day when asking various folks,” Greene said.
“But thousands of folks are familiar with the good the Fund provides to our community.”
Greene also issued a challenge to the new and younger residents to read about Goodfellows and get involved and give back to their community. He issued a plea to that group of folks, asking them to take a few minutes to pull up the website and read the history of the fund.
“We need to grow the base of donors, individuals giving $25, $50 or $100. If we could enlist 500 new donors at $100 that would be a huge gift,” he continued. “It only takes a donation entry of five or six clicks on the website for a new donor to make a huge difference for these families for Christmas.”
About the Goodfellow Fund
The story on the Goodfellows website describes its beginning as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, started by the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1909. A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.
A couple years later, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellows campaign. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.