For the past few years, VanDevere Inc., has given organizations in the community the opportunity to participate in a new car raffle to earn money. These organizations have to have a focus on the children in our community. They sold tickets for the New Car Raffle and kept all the proceeds to use in their organization. It is a great fundraiser for these groups.
This year the participating groups were:
– Akron Area Soap Box Derby
– Catholic Charities
– Indian Guides
– Camp Y-Noah
– Ohio Lightning Softball
– Wesley Temple
– 4-H Rough Riders
– Suffield Lego Club
– Impact Sports Academy
The groups invested a small amount of money to get the tickets and the banners to advertise the raffle. They sold the tickets for $10 each and each ticket was a change to win a brand new 2017 Kia Soul. All the money they made from the sales went directly to the organizations. The winner of the new Soul came from the Rough Riders sales.
This year’s winner is Brenda M. of Akron. If you saw the video on our VanDevere Bunch Facebook page you will see that it was a comical sight. We drew the name the morning of December 13th, live on Facebook. Jerry VanDevere called our winner, Brenda, only to have her not believe him and hang up. It took some time and phone calls from Brenda’s sister to have her believe she actually won. She has experience some “you won a cruise” calls and was a little suspicious. Before the end of the day we were in touch with Brenda and gave her the info about her prize.
To say that Brenda was excited is an understatement. She informed us that she had a 10 year old car and that she would like to take the car. There is an option to take the cash prize. There was only one issue, the income tax that you must pay when you win such a prize. For anyone that is familiar with taxes, this tax you have to pay isn’t just pocket change and may be hard for some of us to come up with. Thankfully for Brenda’s group of awesome friends. They chipped in to help out Brenda with the taxes so that she could get herself her FIRST brand new car!
She was so excited to pick up her new car and the smile on her face when she got in it, was glowing. What a great way to start a new year, with a brand new car!
We congratulate Brenda and thank the organizations for participating.
Thrive and Drive is just one of the few ways VanDevere gives back to the community. We do this because, we live here. We are all family!
If you have an organization that is focused on bettering the lives of our community’s children please feel free to shoot me an email at loris@vandevere.com.