State Auditor Suzanne Bump spends her days scrutinizing people and places by crunching numbers and financial data to produce cost/benefit analyses. After addressing a recent Franklin County Chamber of Commerce breakfast where many of the area’s community leaders had gathered, she emerged animated and happily surprised.
The auditor said she was excited to have found a large group of smart, engaged and interested people in an area with less financial wealth than, say, the Boston Metro area where she lives and works and where the Great Recession no longer lingers.
What she discovered is what we already know: that Franklin County, one of the state’s least financially rich regions, is at the same time one of the state’s most generous, enriched by the many business and civic leaders like those attending that chamber breakfast — many of whom work overtime to make their home a better place in a messy world.
They are the same people who this week have launched two ambitious annual charity drives: the Greenfield Community College Foundation fundraiser and the YMCA in Greenfield Annual Campaign. Scores of workers in the coming weeks will fan out across the county to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to help neighbors advance their prospects through college education and better health.
The involvement cuts across our society. Those who aren’t organizing charities are giving to the charities.
GCC’s “Opening Doors for the Future” campaign began Thursday, working toward its $825,000 goal by May 31. The drive’s co-chair, Nicole Fahey, a GCC alumna, said the college received her as a shy student, gave her mentors and propelled her out of her shell and onto other schools where she eventually would earn a master’s degree. She moved on to a professional job at the local House of Correction, where she says inmates often go on to success at GCC and better their lives.
“Our success as campaigners is measured by more than dollar amounts on a spreadsheet, but will also be seen and felt as a lifelong investment in the vibrancy of our community,” she told fellow foundation supporters.
Across town this week, the YMCA also began reaching out to its supporters in hopes of raising $150,000, about 6 percent more than last year. The money subsidizes membership for the neediest families so they can enjoy the benefits of the agency’s many health and fitness activities that can change their lives, and, therefore, the lives of their families and others around them.
Like Fahey, Y member Millie Ruiz offered testimonials to the value of her agency. A recent graduate of the Y’s doctor-referred Prescribe the Y program, she said it helped her develop a regular exercise program through which she lost 20 pounds and dropped her daily insulin use from 26 units to none — a change that brings with it profound health benefits. Almost 30 percent of the Y’s members and up to 60 percent of the children are receiving some assistance with fees through this campaign.
The Y’s theme this year speaks to all of us who are asked to step up for the greater good of our friends and neighbors: “For a better you. For a better community. For a better us.”
What Auditor Bump felt the other day was not the result of money trickling down but of this community’s generosity bubbling up.