The Bob McCarthy Foundation 2024
The holiday season was very active with the Bob McCarthy’s Irish Christmas a great success with Santa’s Workshop helping 29 families/117 individuals in the Ellicottville area. With this hectic year end schedule, it finally dawned on us that it has been a little over a year since the Bob McCarthy Foundation was transitioned from the Foundation for Youth and Family Support.
Our 501c3 charitable foundation is dedicated to acting as a bridge between families and supportive assistance while trying to level the playing field for many in our community. Transitioning these two entities into a single Foundation allowed us to focus more precisely on our mandate while streamlining our efforts and expanding community involvement. We are now able to react quickly to an identified need within the community bringing solutions that other agencies cannot do in real time.
For those of you who don’t know, the Foundation is over 18 years old with our roots coming from two other support groups with a long history of assistance in Ellicottville. The Foundation for Youth was chartered in 2005 while in 2008 a critical local support group, the Family Support Center at ECS closed while almost simultaneously, the local Salvation Army group disbanded as well.
With the hole created by these closures a number of local volunteers including the late Sherman Wilkens, stepped forward to fill the void by establishing a Family Support affiliate with the mission to confidentially provide help and guidance to those in need, while trying to structure help to be self-sustaining.
Over the years we conducted numerous fundraisers many created by the “Mad” genius of the Voice of Ellicottville, Bob McCarthy. Bob a long-term teacher of Special Ed students in Buffalo and a ski coach in Ellicottville moved to Ellicottville, his winter home, after retirement. Bob’s fun fundraisers like Celtic Thunder, Americana Folk Art & Music Fair, Farm Fest, Snowboard Auction, Another Day in Paradise, Tuscan Moon and many more continue to be that of local lore.
Bob’s most recognized event, Irish Christmas was started to provide funding for Family Support’s “Santa’s Workshop” helping families at Christmas. After his passing in June of 2016 the Foundation, renamed this wonderful evening “Bob McCarthy’s Irish Christmas”. This event now provides the bulk of the funding for most of the Foundation’s work. We continue to ensure that 100% of the donations that are made go back into the Ellicottville community without any administrative costs as we remain a completely volunteer organization.
Although this community is blessed with good fortune, many families struggle providing basic needs in the home. These difficulties put a strain on family finances, emotions, health and schedules. Therefore, families may require some extra patience and understanding while certain issues are worked through and hopefully healed. The Foundation focuses on identifying the needs through the school and other agencies in tune with the issues that families face. From this we support many varied programs like:
- Quarterly support for the local Ellicottville food pantry
- Support for families who cannot pay for heat, food or clothing
- Help for victims of acts of God and ongoing health issues
- Summer student reading camps
- Summer “After park program”
- Ellicottville Library Summer Intern program
- Annual ECS & BOCES Scholarships
- Support for many individual students to help level the playing field financially
- Many more
Our only means of finance are from fundraisers, donation boxes in local business and individual donations with the bulk coming via donations at Bob McCarthy’s Irish Christmas. In all our generous community gives back in incredible ways.
We are excited about the changes implemented over the past year and look forward to continued work in the community. We continue to reach out and invite your input and invite you to join us in our mission.
In 2024 we plan to roll out an Ellicottville specific Seniors program and will provide further information soon once our plans are finalized. In the meantime, please feel free to contact anyone on our Board of Directors for information.
Thanks to our wonderful community.
Bob McCarthy Foundation Board of Directors:
Katy Arena
Greg Cappelli
Kathleen Moriarty
Anne Northrup