Why Your Gift Matters & How You Can Help
Charitable organizations help people and the world in just about every way imaginable. Everything from ending hunger, to fighting environmental change, to addressing economic inequality issues head on. However, none of these charities would be able to do the work they do without donations from everyday people. Without donations these charities would not be able to pay their employees that have decided to spend their time trying to help people; they would not be able to provide their employees with the resources they need to do the best job possible; and they would not be able to get their message out to the world that connects them with the people that need their help the most.
Specifically, of course, we are going to talk about our organization, the Massachusetts Debt Relief Foundation (MDRF). The first side of the services that we provide here include advice about general financial literacy and in-depth consultations on the individual’s needs and goals. By providing free service we are able to help make sure that people that were not previously given the resources to understand their own financial situation can better manage their money and better avoid debt whenever possible. The other side is for people that are already in debt and cannot afford the legal services that are important to helping them improve their services. Instead of paying legal fees, people can come to the MDRF for legal advice and free legal representation through bankruptcy proceedings as well as other debt matters. By providing these two aspects of financial and legal help, we are able to help people across the board.
However, again, we are not able to provide any of these much-needed services to the community without donations. A $200 donation pays for us to walk a client through creating a budget, a $350 donation pays for a comprehensive one-hour legal consultation, $400 covers assisting a client with obtaining the optimal student loan repayment option, and so on up to a $1,500 donation covering an entire legal representation for a client in Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.
Take for example the story of one of our previous clients, a fifty year old single mother. She was well over $10,000 in debt, supporting both herself and her son off of a part time job and food stamps. Filing for bankruptcy was the obvious way forward for her, but without the donations to cover her assistance, she would have been forced to pay the $1,500 fee for a lawyer to take her through bankruptcy proceedings. That would have cost her over a month and a half of her income which was going towards feeding herself and her child. Instead, she was able to be assisted through the entire process by lawyers here at MDRF for free, leaving her with a debt-free fresh start at no cost to her. Without the donations necessary to run this organization, that help provided to this woman would not have been available to her
In that spirit, we would like to invite you to the MDRF 80’s/90’s Halloween Bash on Saturday, October 26th at the Springfield Sheraton. Tickets are $40 for general admission, $20 for college students, and all proceeds will go to MDRF. There will be food, a cash bar, a $200 cash prize for best costume, and, most importantly, by attending you will be supporting us in our mission to do good throughout the community. Click here to buy tickets online or through our Facebook Event Page.
