AKA: Walking the Walk

I have a long association with a fantastic local charity–Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Minnesota. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is when I say I make annual donations to them based on sales of my books, roundup donations for those books, and free will offerings. I send a press release to my local paper every year, but here’s proof that I really do give them all the money YOU donate to them when you purchase one of my books.

I recently presented a check for $575 to BBBS Executive Director Michelle Redman. That money represents the cumulative total of one dollar for each book I sold (in person or online or through bookstores), plus the roundup amount for almost every book I hand-sold (about $1.80 per book depending on the local sales tax I had to charge), plus a few free-will donations. Some folks don’t buy a book, but they give me five or ten dollars to give to BBBS. I keep track of every cent (and round that up to the nearest dollar when I make the donation).

Since I started selling books in 2016 and collaborating with BBBS, I‘m proud to say that my book sales and your generosity have allowed me to donate more than $2,500 to BBBS of Southern MN.

Want to do more?

Donations to your local Big Brothers Big Sisters organization are always welcome, but the real need is recruiting adults young and old to be mentors through BBBS. If there’s a BBBS chapter near your, please contact them and tell them you’re interested in becoming a Big. They won’t pressure you or give you a hard sell. It’s a personal decision that takes some introspection. And you won’t need to make a long-term commitment or spend dozens of hours per month with your Little. We ask you to try it for one year. After that, you can choose to continue or not.

And the time commitment with your Little Brother or Sister is only a few hours per month! Once every two weeks or so for two or three hours is not much of a burden. Of course, many matches end up spending much more time together because they have so much fun. Being a Big is a great way to relive a bit of your childhood and mentor a young person who just might overcome the obstacles and challenges in his/her life because of knowing you! The emotional reward is indescribable.

So contact your local Big Brothers Big Sisters organization by clicking on this link to the national headquarters: Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

There you can plug in your zip code and find the BBBS chapter nearest you. Thanks.

Because I just published Dangerous Straits last month, I hope to break my record for annual donations to BBBS. COVID sidetracked sales for a lot of authors in 2020-2021, but I have a busy schedule this year that I hope will get even busier and I hope to connect with more readers and fans who are hungry to get out and start living life to the fullest again and interacting with people in person and not through a computer screen.