Welcome to Women Giving Back Illinois     

Presenting our donation to the Center for Independent Futures

(l) Ann Sickon, Executive Director and (r) Megan Madigan, Program Director

Our selected charity: Some Assembly Required
Runner up: Hunger Resource Network

Total Donations - $15,875!

We had two charities nominated for our June meeting.  After two powerful presentations, our members chose Some Assembly Required.  

We blew through the previous record of donations for one meeting by raising a total of $15,875. We raised $13,200 from 52 people for Some Assembly Required including $8,000 from two generous donors. We also collected $2,425 from 26 donors for Hunger Resource Network. 25 people gave to both charities which is a trend we hope will continue!

​

People also donated $250 to previous charities -- $200 to Our House of Hope Rescue and $50 to Normal Moments.  That brings us to a grand total of $15,875 for our June meeting. 

​

THANK YOU again everyone for their generosity. Our next meeting will be in September, so be thinking about a charity you want to nominate.  We plan to be back in person at Sunset Foods in Northbrook and hope to have a Zoom option for those of you who can't make it. 

​

Sandy

​

PS:  We'd love to have new members! Do you know someone who would enjoy becoming a micro-philanthropist?  If so, tell them about the important work we do and then send them to our website and have them Contact Us.  

​

​

Meet Some Assembly Required

​

​

The mission of Some Assembly Required (SRA) is to ease the burden for families while their child is recovering from heart surgery at the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. ​Families must pay for their own parking to visit their child at the hospital. Through the generosity of donors, SRA provides parking passes free of charge to parents whose focus should be on their child's recovery, not on paying for parking which can cost thousands of dollars.

 .

All donations go towards funding parking passes for families who are inpatient with lengthy hospital stays for their children awaiting or recovering from major open-heart surgery.

We invite you to read these testimonials:

​

“Some Assembly Required parking pass and community helped us through some of the hardest times of our lives.”

- Stella’s Parents

“Without the parking pass, we would have struggled to pay daily parking rates to be with our baby.”

-Olivia’s Parents

“There was a lot of stressors during that time and we are thankful the added burden of parking costs was not one of them. Thanks to SAR we were able to be with Josh for the entirety of his recovery in the hospital.”

-Josh’s Mom

“Without the SAR parking pass, I would have been hours away from my baby girl as she goes through the most crucial part of her life alone.”

-Irma’s Mom

“We were able to park at the hospital for free thanks to Some Assembly Required CCU and all the amazing who donated through them.”

-Matthias’ Mom

Note: Matthias spent over 14 months in the cardiac ICU and the SAR parking pass covered nearly $7,000 in parking fees for the family. Sadly, Matthias is no longer with us on earth, but is our giant in the sky watching all the amazing work he has inspired down below.

​

Sandy Wagman presenting our donation to Lauren Shub (l), President of SAR with Barb Pinzur, nominator, and Shub’s son (r), Winston. He had heart surgery at Lurie and unprompted, lifted his shirt to show us where ‘"the doctor fixed my heart”.