Help Our Heroes: 7,000 meals served, $67,000 back into Chinatown
Hi everyone,
Our weekly update is coming a little late this week — last week was a doozy. We signed with the Players Philanthropy Fund (PPF) as our fiscal sponsor, put together our first Greens for Good produce delivery for CPC’s senior community, served 1,000 meals to nurses who traveled from across the country to care for New Yorkers, and launched our merchandise store, including a collaboration with the legendary Chinatown restaurant staple, Jing Fong.
In our 5th week of donations, here is what your donations helped to accomplish:
Served another 1,600 meals during the week, which included fulfilling our largest donation request of 1,000 meals.
$19,000 back into Chinatown, totaling to $67,000 in meals purchased and back into Chinatown businesses
Lately, we’ve been thinking about the long-term strategy and progression of Welcome to Chinatown which led us to seek a fiscal sponsor and register under PPF’s 501(c)(3) status. What does that mean for Welcome to Chinatown? It means more opportunity to give back to the Chinatown community. Our mission remains the same: to support Chinatown businesses following the impact of COVID-19 and serve as a free voice to generate much needed momentum for one of New York City’s most vibrant neighborhoods. Small businesses are the microcosm of Chinatown and we cannot afford to lose that. We want to help Chinatown get back on its feet, but we know we can’t do it alone. We have learned, depended on and also supported many community partners throughout this initiative, and we’re excited to add PPF as an extension of our team and initiative.
For our Help Our Heroes fundraiser, we’re continuing to expand outreach to other essential businesses to show our appreciation for frontline workers and also monitoring state and local officials’ updates on when PAUSE will lift. As we learn more of PAUSE’s end date, we’ll also look to diversify how we raise funds to support Chinatown for the long-term, recognizing there will still be a long road to recovery ahead.
In the meantime, you might’ve noticed we have increased our fundraising goal to $150,000. We project we need roughly ~$30,000 more in donations to continue feeding the frontlines through our Help Our Heroes campaign, forecasting these estimates against the speculated June 7th date when PAUSE might lift.
Thank you SO much for your continued support throughout these last two months; the feedback we’ve been getting from Chinatown businesses is assurance that your donations are making a huge difference.
With thanks from Chinatown,
Vic, Jen and the Welcome to Chinatown team
