Doing Good in the LBC is an occasional newsletter about the nonprofits, causes and people who do good in our city. If you don’t normally receive this newsletter, sign up here.
Remember the Long Beach Nonprofit Challenge? We told you about it earlier this year – and I’m very pleased to announce the winner(s) of the $50,000 (+) challenge.
Mike and Tracy Murchison and their family foundation launched the challenge earlier this year in hopes of spurring creative ideas and collaboration among nonprofits throughout the city.
They received 32 applications, and ultimately chose a collaboration between Anchoring Hope in Long Beach, a grassroots movement focused on suicide prevention, awareness, and education, and The Guidance Center, which provides mental healthcare to underprivileged youth and families.
The two nonprofits teamed up around the idea of fostering group strength for those suffering from mental health challenges. They plan to distribute 2,500 “Anchor Boxes” that contain resources in multiple formats that are “designed to inspire, uplift, and empower recipients.”
The premise is that each person has an anchor to something that lends strength and comfort.
The Murchisons are also supporting two other proposals that they hope will allow the affiliated groups to move forward with their collaborations. These runners-up were proposals by:
Cooper Steinhauser Foundation, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center Foundation, St. Mary Medical Center Foundation, and the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. These groups plan to launch The Long Beach Lullaby Program, a citywide music and healing initiative designed to bring comfort, connection and joy to Long Beach families and infants.
And: The Long Beach Community Table and Peer Education Community Center, which plan to launch the Long Beach Resilience Lab. The lab aims to help Long Beach residents improve food and preparedness skills, along with environmental stewardship and neighborhood resilience.
“We are so very proud of our community and look forward to many more years of partnership with all of you,” the Murchisons said in the announcement.
Long Beach Gives
Appropro to the above, funders are increasingly looking to reward those who work together. There’s no better opportunity than Long Beach Gives.
If you’re a nonprofit, you should already be registered (check), and have the creatives and materials downloaded (to do), and be thinking about who to enlist as a peer fundraiser (not a shred of thought).
Thank you Julie Meenan, Michelle Byerly, Darick Simpson, Griselda Suarez and many more for organizing this effort each year. Since 2019, the day of giving – this year slated for Sept. 24 – has raised over $13 million for the city’s nonprofits.
More on that to come.