To make the lives of children and their families a little brighter by focusing on their individual needs with the help of volunteers.

Our Mission:

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A MAKING KIDS COUNT E-NEWSLETTER

JULY 2011

From Our Desk to YoursHope everyone is managing to

stay cool this month. It’s going to be a warm one!

Summer flies by, doesn’t it? We are full go preparing for our upcoming Golf Outing on August 6th at the Flying “B” Golf Course. We still have a few team slots available. If you are interested in getting a 4-person team together, please e-mail us at mkc@makingkidscount.org or call us at (330)501-9865! Also, if you would be interested in sponsoring a hole, please contact us at the e-mail address or phone number listed above! It is $75 to

sponsor a hole and in turn for your generosity, we will provide signage for your business at the Golf Outing itself, add your local business to our website, our Facebook site, and to our monthly e-newsletter.

We have been having a great time with the children at our monthly Beatitude House parties. It has been really great to get to know them better and to be able to provide them with monthly celebrations!

This month is also our 1 year anniversary from our incorporation as Making Kids Count. See the

second page of this newsletter for a reflection of this year’s work.

Have a great month! As always, please remember that everyone possesses the potential to do great things for their community!

Shelly and Jana

In this month’s edition:

One Year 2Program Development 2Calendar 4

This picture was taken at one of our Beatitude House parties!

Program

Development

As we take a moment to look back at all that we have done in one year, we look with anticipation to the future and the different opportunities that we face with new programming options. In the next couple of months we hope to develop one if not two new programs to add to our organization. We would like to focus our new programs on the local schools. As cuts to the local school budgets become greater, we recognize a need to help alleviate in any way some of the struggles of the schools. We will be excited to share with you what we will be doing in the upcoming months!

Our One Year Anniversary!

Making Kids Count

at a GlanceJuly 2010 - - - Date of Incorporation

100% - - - the amount of fundraiser proceeds that go to our programs

15 - - - Monthly Birthday Parties Celebrated at the Beatitude House

6 - - - Planned fundraisers for 2011

Website: www.makingkidscount.org

E-mail: mkc@makingkidscount.org

Phone Number: (330) 518-4371

Making Kids Count, Inc.P.O. Box 3594Youngstown, Ohio 44513

Our Staff:Shelly Marlowe - Co-President

Jana Hammer-Coffin - Co-PresidentJenny (Eisenbraun) Kennedy - Director of Human Resources

We officially incorporated Making Kids Count with the State of Ohio on July 12, 2010. We will be celebrating our 1 year anniversary! We wanted to take this opportunity to reflect over what this year has meant to us and how we got where we are.

This year has been a whirlwind! A great whirlwind, but one nonetheless. Incorporation with the state was just our first step in getting Making Kids Count up and running. After filing our Articles of Incorporation, we sought out to put together a board of directors to support our mission (we introduced you to our wonderful board in a previous newsletter) as well as establishing our bylaws and setting in place our other policies to govern our organization.

We also obtained our 501(c)(3) status from the I.R.S. so that contributions to Making Kids Count would be tax deductible, as well as receiving additional cuts and support from the federal and state government. We filed the lengthly form on October 1st and we received our determination letter just one month later, letting us know that we had fulfilled all of the requirements to be considered a 501(c)(3) organization! There were many other forms and filings, but these were the biggest ones that really helped send us on our way!

After all the initial paperwork was completed, we started to develop our current programs. We did this by reaching out to the community to see where we were really needed the most and where we could offer something new.

We quickly developed our Beatitude House birthday program and our newborn basket program. Our Akron Children’s Hospital birthday parties and basket drop off at the Pregnancy Help Center soon followed behind.

Fundraising in a tough economic climate is always a challenge. We feel that we have been very fortunate to have all the continued support that we do from friends, family members, and the community. In the winter we hosted both a Bowl-A-Thon and a Spaghetti Dinner. This past spring we had a Community Garage Sale and our Golf Outing is rapidly approaching! We have also had a strong presence at our volunteer days where we make greeting cards and crafts that we sell at local craft shows. We will also be attending the Oktoberfest this year!

This was just a short description of what has gone on this year. What we do could not be possible without all of you, so thank you for a great year and we look forward to the next year with great excitement!

julyjuly5Volunteer Day - 10 am to 4 pm - Akron Children’s Hospital Community Room

8Newborn Basket Drop Off at Pregnancy Help Center

13Beatitude House Party

july

August 2Volunteer Day at Akron Children’s Hospital Community Room - 10 am to 5 pm

August 6Golf Outing at Flying “B” Golf Course in Salem

“Coin Collectors” Fundraiser!Making Kids Count, Inc. is looking for people to join us in our “Coin

Collectors” fundraising program. Pocket change doesn’t seem like it could make a difference, however, it really does add up! We are asking friends, family, and friends of family to help us in our endeavors to turn spare change into dollars! 100% of the money raised in this fundraiser will go straight to our efforts in helping children & their families in the Valley.If you are interested in helping us please contact us by e-mail at: mkc@makingkidscount.org.

Upcoming Fundraising Events

August 6th - Golf Outing - There are a few team spots left! Sign your team up today!

NewsletterIf you would like to be included in our monthly e-newsletter list, please

send an e-mail from the account that you would like to receive the e-newsletter to shelly@makingkidscount.org. If you would no longer like to receive the “Monthly Change” e-newsletter, please send an e-mail with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line to shelly@makingkidscount.org and you will be removed from the distribution list as soon as possible!

Gather Your Recipes!We will be putting together a recipe book to sell as an additional fundraiser for Making Kids Count. We want your personal recipes! Send an e-mail to us at mkc@makingkidscount.org with "Recipe" as the subject and we will send you information on how to submit your recipes! Thank you!