J&B's Wedding Charity Donation
Donation protected
Shortly after getting engaged, I suggested (and Brittany quickly agreed) that it would be great to donate a portion of our wedding gift money and contributions to honor my late step mother, Hillary Hertzog. We very quickly realized that a regular registry wasn't going to work and that we were going to akwardly (akward for American's at least) going to have to make it a cash gift wedding.
So what better way to do that than to honor Hillary with donations to American Cancer Society and DonorsChoose.org (a non-profit website that enables you to donate to specific gradeschool classrooms for teachers that often self-fund their own in-class projects). And best of all, my employer LinkedIn can match gifts for both charities!
We have already set aside over $2000 in wedding contributions from both our families and we also plan to donate a portion of cash gifts reveived at the wedding. The purpose of this gofundme campaign is to see if we can raise a few more dollars from friends and family who won't be attending the wedding, but would like to help raise money for a good cause. 100% of the funds raised through this gofundme campaign will be donated :-)
The Backstory:
For those that didn't know Hillary, she was an incredible woman. On top of being mother-of-the-millenium raising her two kids, Matt and Lauren, Hillary spent her entire career dedicated to the improvement of education in the greater LA area and across the state of California. Hillary graduated from the University of Southern California with a masters in education and started her early career teaching elementary school students in LA Unified School District teaching herself Spanish at night in order to be a more effective teacher for her students. Eventually she moved up to the university level where she fought and bled for many impactful projects to improve California's educational system. When she wasn't fighting for grants to fund her next project she was grooming our next wave of educators at USC and eventually Cal State Northridge.
Hillary entered my life in the spring of 2007 when she reconnected with my dad, Jim. They were high school sweethearts and after that it took them three decades to reconnect at their 30 year high school reunion and eventually live out their high school dream of getting married - straight out of a fairytale, right? She taught me what it meant to be passionate about something, live life to the fullest, and truly love your family and friends.
Sadly, after two rounds with endometrian cancer, Hillary was taken from our lives in December of 2015. It was an incredibly difficult time for our family. We all went through our own unique grieving processes and it tought me a lot about resilience, emotions, my own ability to connect with people, and a realization that life is short and you better "get busy living", as the saying goes.
So here I am, two years later, living in Europe, working in an amazing company that challenges me every day, traveling the world, and very exited to have found someone that makes me extremely happy every day. We sincerely appreciate any gifts that we'll be receiving over the next few weeks and we're honored to be able to donate a portion of these gifts to fund cancer research and help underfunded classrooms in West Los Angeles.
So what better way to do that than to honor Hillary with donations to American Cancer Society and DonorsChoose.org (a non-profit website that enables you to donate to specific gradeschool classrooms for teachers that often self-fund their own in-class projects). And best of all, my employer LinkedIn can match gifts for both charities!
We have already set aside over $2000 in wedding contributions from both our families and we also plan to donate a portion of cash gifts reveived at the wedding. The purpose of this gofundme campaign is to see if we can raise a few more dollars from friends and family who won't be attending the wedding, but would like to help raise money for a good cause. 100% of the funds raised through this gofundme campaign will be donated :-)
The Backstory:
For those that didn't know Hillary, she was an incredible woman. On top of being mother-of-the-millenium raising her two kids, Matt and Lauren, Hillary spent her entire career dedicated to the improvement of education in the greater LA area and across the state of California. Hillary graduated from the University of Southern California with a masters in education and started her early career teaching elementary school students in LA Unified School District teaching herself Spanish at night in order to be a more effective teacher for her students. Eventually she moved up to the university level where she fought and bled for many impactful projects to improve California's educational system. When she wasn't fighting for grants to fund her next project she was grooming our next wave of educators at USC and eventually Cal State Northridge.
Hillary entered my life in the spring of 2007 when she reconnected with my dad, Jim. They were high school sweethearts and after that it took them three decades to reconnect at their 30 year high school reunion and eventually live out their high school dream of getting married - straight out of a fairytale, right? She taught me what it meant to be passionate about something, live life to the fullest, and truly love your family and friends.
Sadly, after two rounds with endometrian cancer, Hillary was taken from our lives in December of 2015. It was an incredibly difficult time for our family. We all went through our own unique grieving processes and it tought me a lot about resilience, emotions, my own ability to connect with people, and a realization that life is short and you better "get busy living", as the saying goes.
So here I am, two years later, living in Europe, working in an amazing company that challenges me every day, traveling the world, and very exited to have found someone that makes me extremely happy every day. We sincerely appreciate any gifts that we'll be receiving over the next few weeks and we're honored to be able to donate a portion of these gifts to fund cancer research and help underfunded classrooms in West Los Angeles.
Organizer
Jesse Cook
Organizer
