Bettendorf, Iowa, December 1, 2015 - In March of 2014 friends Karly Driscoll and Monica Burchett found themselves feeling the same call to do something for others after a weekend retreat at their church. One email led to another and the conversations and brainstorms continued to evolve. The end result is a new Quad Cities nonprofit organization, Project 15:12 Love One Another, that plans to love others when life happens.
"One day I got an email from her (Driscoll) with the subject line 'Tell me I'm crazy,'" Burchett remembers. "It was about a woman who started up a nonprofit organization to help inmates. I told her the jail part might not be my thing, but that I could totally get behind a nonprofit!"
Since then the two have been working on defining just what that nonprofit would be and who it would serve. The two felt there was a void in the community, as well as many other communities, for people in the middle place. Project 15:12, which takes its name from the Bible verse John 15:12, Love each other as I have loved you, aims to help people who might not qualify for other assistance programs or people who wouldn't normally go looking for assistance. Their goal is to help this population by offering emotional, spiritual, and practical support when they are experiencing a hard season of life such as divorce, loss of job, loss of a loved one, natural disaster, illness or unexpected circumstance. Services Project 15:12 will provide include (but aren't limited to): immediate financial support during life transition to help with groceries, day care costs, rent or mortgage, daily life costs, providing and delivering warm meals, household items, and household services. Beyond providing these important physical needs is also the utmost importance of providing prayer for people going through life.
"We really want to serve a niche or population of people who currently aren't being served. We know the need is out there and we feel there is a great need for this in our community," Driscoll says.
After making some great strides in the summer of 2014, the two women each experienced some of their own life transitions, which put Project 15:12 on the back burner for awhile.
"We came to a bit of a standstill ," Driscoll says. "My sick grandfather moved in with my family for a couple of months, Monica took a temporary job and then had a baby, so we both needed a little time to work through some changes in our own lives."
This fall the two got serious again about making Project 15:12 a reality. They revisited and revised their business plan, put together a board of directors, and filed the necessary documents to earn their nonprofit designation, which they just received late November. They started raising funds by reaching out to friends and family and the word has spread from there.
Burchett says they have established three criteria when considering a person or family to receive assistance from Project 15:12. First, the person or family must be living in the Quad Cities area. Second, recipients should not currently be receiving income-based welfare benefits (e.g., TANF, Medicaid, SNAP). Lastly, a family or individual can receive Project 15:12 funds or assistance for up to three months per 12-month period. After they have received the maximum amount of assistance, they will need to wait 12-months from the last month of assistance before applying for Project 15:12 funds again.
Anyone wishing to receive help from Project 15:12 needs to either fill out a request form or be referred by someone. Driscoll says she sees more referrals coming in rather than people asking for help for themselves.
"We really hope to offer relief in the short term, an opportunity for people to catch their breath while they make a plan for the future in front of them," Burchett notes.
