Manitoba poetry needs your help!

The Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund needs your help. Our goal? Raise an additional $1,500.00 by September 25th, 2006.

If we meet our goal and collect $1,500.00, we will have raised the $7,500.00 we require to qualify for a matching program through The Winnipeg Foundation where they'll match our upcoming fundraising efforts dollar for dollar to establish an award to recognize Manitoba poets. Thanks to our fundraising and the community's generosity, we've made a strong head start but we're not quite there yet. Every dollar we receive will help bring us closer to $7,500.00. Once we reach this milestone, The Winnipeg Foundation will match the next $7,500 we raise for the fund.

On the other hand, if we don't meet our goal by September 25th, we'll lose the chance to participate in the matching program for next year. This means we'll have to work extra hard to raise the necessary money if we plan to present the first poetry award in 2007. Worse, it could delay the award by another year or so.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

If you can't imagine a day without poetry, words or reading, help us out by:

1) forwarding this email to people in your address book. Literary lovers, savvy investors/donors and proud Manitobans (even if they're temporarily transplanted somewhere else) are good places to start. If you know of anyone else who can help, please click forward now.

2) sending us that money you've earmarked for a worthy cause.

3) searching your sofa cushions, the pockets of every garment you own and that purse you rarely use for an extra few bucks and sending us whatever you find.

4) brown bagging it or making your own coffee for a couple of weeks and sending us what you save (and encouraging your co-workers, family and friends to do the same).

5) talking about the Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund. Educate people about the fact that Manitoba is currently the only province in Canada without a prize honouring our poets and we're working to change that.

Every dollar counts, so we hope we can count on you. With your help, we can raise $7,500.00 by September 25th and bring us that much closer to presenting Manitoba's first poetry award in 2007.

Donations should be sent to:

The Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund
c/o The Manitoba Writers' Guild
206-100 Arthur Street
Winnipeg, MB
R3B 1H3

Please make cheques payable to the Manitoba Writers' Guild. The Guild also accepts credit cards. All donations over $5.00 will receive a tax receipt.

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS SHOULD BE SENT TO:

poetry@mbwriter.mb.ca

Thank you for your support of Manitoba poets and the creation of a prize to honour their work!

Sharon Caseburg, Co-Chair
Lori Cayer, Co-Chair
Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund

* * *

I'd like to challenge all Manitoba writers (and even those outside of Manitoba) to consider contributing to this cause...though I'm on the Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund committee and have already contributed both time and money, I'm going to commit to a cash donation at this time of $40.

Now I know this isn't a lot of money, given that it took a million dollars' worth of folding money for Demi Moore to slither around in in Indecent Proposal, but neither is it nothing - and if enough of us contribute smallish amounts, this fundraising drive will go like gangbusters...

Yours,

Ariel