Tonight, you have an opportunity to have a little fun, good food and help out the Tenant Resource Center. THe Tenant Resource Center will be having its 12th annual fall fundraiser tonight from 5 – 7 at the Brink Lounge (701 E Washington Ave.) This event usually raises $10,000. This year we need to raise over twice that due to recent funding losses if we want to keep our statewide toll-free phone line and the staff to answer those phone calls. Without it, we will not be able to serve thousands of tenants throughout Wisconsin each year with problems with repairs, evictions, getting security deposits returned and fairly breaking their leases when they need to move for work, school or other reasons plus a whole lot more.
Our funding problems started last year when the UW Finance Committee did not find the Tenant Resource Center eligible for funding for this school year because we were not 100% student controlled. We lost $55,000 in funding with that decision and then just a few weeks ago we found out that HUD would no longer be funding the toll-free line and it would be another $41,000 loss in funding. These two losses have a big impact on our formerly $350,000 budget and strike at our core services for the agency.
While we will not be closing our doors, we will have to substantially change the way we do our services and cut back on various services unless we can raise and additional $60,000 per year through various methods. While we will continue to seek grants for this funding, we know that it is harder and harder to get funding for these types of services as finding gets scarcer and scarcer and we need to get help from the community to keep these services, and we have created a plan to raise that money, but it starts with YOU!
So, one of our first steps is to make sure tonight is a great success. Please join us at the Brink Lounge for good food, a silent auction and good company. While we suggest $20 donation, we understand not everyone can afford that and ask you to donate within your means. And please, thank our sponsors as well as the food and silent auction donors. We appreciate the tremendous response we have gotten from the community and now we’d like you to come help us have some fun and meet our fundraising goals.
If you can’t make it tonight, here’s some other ways you can help:
- Donate on-line or send a check to: Tenant Resource Center, 1202 Williamson Street Suite A, Madison, WI 53703.
- Tell your friends, neighbors, co-workers and acquaintances that they can donate on-line or by writing a check.
- Volunteer to be a housing counselor or office assistant. We’ll train you and ask for a year commitment of 2 -4 hours per week.
- Consider becoming a “sustaining member” of the Tenant Resource Center.
- Donate through your workplace giving campaign through Community Shares of Wisconsin.
- Thank our food and silent auction donors and especially our sponsors:
Bahn Thai
Bandung
Glass Nickel Pizza
Noodles & Co. on University Avenue
Ian’s Pizza
Great Dane
Fazoli’s
Monty’s Blue Plate Diner
Barb Sherkow
Buddy Squirrel
Budget Bicycle
Burrito Drive
Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream
Community Pharmacy
The Exclusive Company
Four Star Video Heaven
The Harmony Bar
MoCo Market
Monkey Bar Gymnasium
Morgan’s Shoes
A Room of One’s Own
Rufus DuMonde Pet Salon
Trader Joe’s
Weary Traveler
Willy Street Co-op
SPONSORS
MG&E
Jesse Kaysen
Amy Westra
Joann Brown
Fair Housing Center of Greater Madison
Sheila Guilfoyle
Stuart Levitan & Terese Berceau
Renaissance Property Group
Bill White & Kathie Nichols
Mike & Pam Barrett
Michael & Sarah Basford
Carousel Bayrd & Tim Sobota
Brian Benford
Carol Carstensen
Yogesh Chawla
Joe Clausius
Bill Clingan
Tom & Kia Conrad
Ilse & Rudy Hecht
Steve Herrick
Herrick & Kasdorf LLP
Elisa Kaplan
Pete Karas
Julia Kerr
Heidi Konkel & Clint Otto
Annette Larie
Norm Littlejohn
Dean Loumos
Madison Area Community
Land Trust
Madison Infoshop
Alice Malacara
Marsha Mansfield &
Steve Schooler
Rita Meuer
Satya Rhodes-Conway
Harry Richardson
Juscha Robinson
Marsha Rummel
Alex Saloutos
Vicky Selkowe
Sheila Spear
Echnaton Vedder
Robbie Webber
Susan Webster
Carol Weidel
Ledell Zellers
Alfonso Zepeda-Capistran
Dace Zeps
Bert Zipperer & Laurie Frank
Plus all the donors who contributed after our deadline, fortunately that list is long and we are still compiling it — we appreciate EVERYONE’S tremendous generosity and support!
