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Charity Pitch: Rise

By Anonymous
For my charity pitch, I am asking you all to support Rise. Some of you may be familiar with Rise, either from my group’s presentation on organizations or from your own knowledge. Despite Rise not being selected as a finalist for the grants, I still wanted to focus my efforts on helping them receive some type of funding, as I feel they are doing great things for Broome County.

What is Rise? Rise is a domestic violence shelter. But it’s much more than that. Originally founded in 1979 as the “SOS Shelter,” the organization has since expanded to be more than strictly a haven for domestic violence victims. Rise’s mission statement is to “assist families who experience or are threatened with domestic violence and to increase the community’s awareness of this pervasive problem.” Rise provides several services, including advocacy and legal services to housing. I do not want to go into great detail regarding the specifics of what they do, as I want to save that for my charity pitch.

I wanted to do my charity pitch on Rise for two reasons. The first reason is I believe that domestic violence is such a prevalent issue not only in Broome County, but in the world. According to statistics, there are six hundred domestic violence cases in Broome County each month; on a global scale, there are over ten million cases each year. Domestic violence is a simple crime to commit yet is tremendously devastating to those who experience it. I believe that by supporting a local organization that tackles this problem, it will help not only Broome County, but will hopefully expand to larger areas. The second reason why I chose to support this organization is because of my personal experience with domestic violence. When I was a child, one of my sisters was in a relationship with a not-so-nice guy. Her boyfriend’s brother was what you would call a nutcase. The brother once came to my house in the middle of the night and began trying to break windows and yelling obscene threats. Why was he doing it? No one knows, but it most likely had to do with my sister dating his brother. Another time, my sister’s boyfriend did abuse her, both physically and verbally. The police were called in both scenarios, but the trauma that my sister and my family felt through these events did not go away. My sister never got help both because she was scared to and because there were no trusted places where I lived to get help. Rise is a well-established, trusted place that offers terrific help to domestic violence victims. I do wish my sister had a place like Rise to go to.

To conclude this, I want to explain a few reasons why I feel you should support Rise. Rise is doing amazing things and is helping rebuild the lives of those who have experienced domestic violence. It is not exclusive only to women: men and children are also welcomed into the shelter. Rise provides all of what it does for its residents at no cost. Rise has never made a single person in the shelter pay for any service. Giving this money to Rise would mean a lot to me and to the shelter, as even one hundred dollars would be able to help five separate families with the essentials for several months. Rise is an accessible shelter that does much more than house victims: it provides education, guidance, and creates opportunities for those who may suffer from the after-effects of domestic violence. Even if I do not receive the donation, I am still glad I was able to get the word out and raise awareness for this organization.

Comments

  1. Lillie JuliusMarch 6, 2019 at 12:04 PM

    Hey Ryan!

    First, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk about Rise in your charity pitch! Once you brought in the story of your sister, I began to read this piece in my brother's voice. Growing up in a single mother household, my brother took it upon himself to be the protector with a "nobody hurts my sister" mindset. Though he is my younger brother, he has always been critical of anyone I have dated, always looking out for me. Your post struck a cord with me in that sense. You do everything you can to protect the ones you love, but that doesn't always work.

    That's something that people often fail to realize. In class, I advocated for Rise because like you, I see the apparent need for it in the area. According to Family Life Project Key Investigators, "IPV (intimate partner violence) among women living in rural areas was higher than it was for women living in urban areas, that the violence they reported was significantly more severe, and that the mean distance to the nearest IPV resource was three times greater than it was for women living in urban areas" (Cox/Gustafsson). The reason why I bring this up is to point out how difficult it may be to access help. Even driving around Binghamton, an urban/suburban town, you are guaranteed to be in the car for 10 minutes, minimum. Now consider adding the more rural backdrop of surrounding towns in the county, maybe take a away the car. Then, it is much more difficult to get around and to get to a shelter that is not local.

    Domestic violence shelters are for everyone and I'm grateful that you pointed this out. It kind of goes back to the concept of everybody knows somebody, but nobody expects it to be them. I believe it is super important to demystify domestic violence because addressing a problem is the first step to eradicate it. I am excited to be able to give Rise another chance at a donation and am excited to hear your pitch!
    -Lillie

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    Replies
    1. Lillie JuliusMarch 6, 2019 at 12:06 PM

      I forgot but here is the link where I got some of my information from in case anyone would like to check it out :) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4687491/

      Delete
  2. YannMarch 9, 2019 at 12:55 AM

    Hey Ryan,

    I want to start off by thanking you for picking Rise as the foundation you advocated for. As I remember from being in a group together, we all thought very highly of Rise and I was very disappointed when it wasn't selected to be one of the finalists.

    I want to also commend you for sharing about your sister. I know that is a very personal topic and I'm guessing one that is not easy to share with everyone. As you said, domestic abuse is disgusting and yet, pretty common. It seems pretty logical to have shelters in every town to support victims and others involved.

    In all honesty, my initial thoughts as I was reading this were: "This is definitely an organization that I would love to donate to, however, I feel like our donation of a little over a hundred dollars would not be very effective." By contrast, I was very happy to see that you already calculated exactly how the 100 dollars would be used and just how beneficial it would be.

    I look forward to your presentation and as you said, regardless of rather or not Rise gets our donation, spreading the word about it was also very important.

    Best of luck,
    Yann

    ReplyDelete

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