On Thursday, October 15th The Ark Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Shelter was awarded a check for $2,500 from TexasBank for winning the #TexasBankShares Contest. The ARK received the most votes out of the 14 nonprofit organizations in the Brown County contest.
TexasBank launched their Facebook page in early August, and followed that up with the start of the #TexasBankShares contest which ran from Labor Day through Monday, October 12th. Nonprofit agencies that fell under the 501(c)(3) qualification were allowed to enter the contest. The goal was to give back to the communities in which the bank employees live, work and serve. TexasBank also has locations in Comanche, Erath and Eastland counties, and separate contests were held in each of those as well.
“We saw an opportunity to launch this in conjunction with the start of our Facebook page, and as a way to give back to the nonprofits that give so much to the communities in which we have bank locations,” said Greg Dodds, President and CEO. “Thank you to all of our local nonprofits that participated, and congratulations to The ARK.”
Through a link on the bank’s Facebook page users were able to go on and vote once a day for the nonprofit that they would most like to see win the money. The nonprofits shared the link on their own Facebook pages, and encouraged their supporters to vote for them. Weekly standings were shared on the TexasBank Facebook page throughout the contest, and on Tuesday October 13th the nonprofits with the most votes in each county were announced on the page.
Mary Silver, Volunteer and Program Coordinator for The ARK Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Shelter shared how they planned to reach their goal of winning.
“We counted the days that we had remaining in the contest, which was 34, and came up with 34 reasons why someone should vote for us and posted that to our Facebook page every day,” said Silver. “We also enlisted our supporters to vote every single day, and we didn’t give up!”
For The ARK their goal in winning the money was to be able to afford and start The WHO program in area Middle Schools and High Schools.
“This came at a great time for us in getting our domestic violence education program out there. This is something that we have been wanting to do for several years, but have not been able to,” said Silver. “The WHO program is a teaching program that educates youth on domestic violence, and on how to avoid it and learn from it. We do a lot of work with victims, but we really want to stop domestic violence before it begins, and we believe this program will help us do that.”
Winners in other counties were as follows : Comanche County –Caring Hearts for Children’s Foundation, Erath County-The Love Basket Food Pantry, and Eastland County-The Eastland County Children’s Advocacy Center.