Northern Indiana Atheists Holiday Fundraiser 2018

Now that the 2018 holiday season is finally over, we can reflect on an eventful time for ourselves as individuals, but also as we represented atheists during a time of religious overdrive and helped our community’s most vulnerable at a time when many are struggling.

In addition to collecting winter clothing for the homeless and people in need, Northern Indiana Atheists (NIA) wanted to make a significant impact on the lives of struggling people in the area, so we teamed up with Michiana Skeptics to make it happen. Michiana Skeptics is a Facebook group that includes skeptics from various political and religious beliefs who coalesce under the umbrella of the process of applying reasoning and critical thinking to determine validity. Michiana Skeptics had sponsored a holiday fundraiser for the past several years, so it made sense for the two groups to join together to raise money for our community this winter.

The fundraiser got a late start, so we set the goal at $200—we reasoned that having even a small fundraiser was better than none. Soon after its start, the goal had to be increased because of the generous outpouring of donations by the wonderful members of NIA and Michiana Skeptics.

News stories that covered the Holiday Display NIA placed in the County-City Building in South Bend, Indiana, mentioned the fundraiser as well, which helped bring in donations. So we raised the goal to $333, then to $444, and so on until we hit $666. From there, as we increased in larger increments over the next few weeks, the job of finding more families to assist began to take on a whole new challenge. Thanks to the skeptic community, atheist community, our allies in the religious community, family members, and friends, we raised a total of $1,761.

The fundraiser committee quickly went to work to buy and wrap presents and assist with other needs, such as medical bills. An NIA member generously donated food vouchers which lead to another member donating food vouchers and we were able to help the adopted families with food insecurities this year. In all, we were able to assist six families from diverse backgrounds, ages, and walks of life. NIA and Michiana Skeptics wants to thank each and every donor for their generous support this holiday season.

This spring, NIA with be collecting clothing at area locations that we will announce later, and we look forward to working with our community to help those in need.

If this type of community service is important to you, please consider becoming a member of NIA. Membership support is critically important to our work. Not only are you making an investment in the future of Northern Indiana Atheists, you are lending your voice to our cause. Having dues-paying members in our community is how we are able to tackle important state/church violation issues that are brought to our attention and allows us to more effectively represent atheists in our community.

Membership is open to atheists and our allies who share our vision for a government that represents all citizens equally, our passion for serving our community, and our enjoyment of educating people on what it means to be an atheist in Northern Indiana.