November 17, 2016
Project Status: Give to the Max today
Today is Give to the Max Day, which is an initiative started by GiveMN, an offshoot of Minnesota Community Foundation. And here we are, a couple residing in Wisconsin most of the year, asking people from Minnesota and beyond to make donations to a nonprofit restoration project in remote Bottineau, North Dakota.
Why, considering all of the other nonprofits with great causes closer to home, should you make a contribution to the Stone Bank Project today?
Maybe because we need it more than most. Maybe because you’re a supportive friend. Or maybe because you realize that they’re not hand-building Main Street anchors out of millennial-old stone boulders anymore. If this project fails and they tear down this landmark, we all lose a part of our pioneer history that is unrecoverable, unique and yet universal.
The State Historical Society of North Dakota has recognized this with a $20,000 grant to the Stone Bank Project that must be matched, dollar for dollar, by April 15. That’s where you come in. Every dollar you contribute to the Stone Bank on Give to the Max Day or any day goes directly toward matching that grant and, ultimately, paying for the $58,000 worth of work our contractors will do to enclose the back quarter of the Stone Bank building.
As you can see in the slide show on our fresh new home page, StoneBank.org, we have raised the funds to excavate a basement foundation, install a heated concrete floor and raise concrete-block support walls. The materials for the first floor decking are here. Now we need to fund their installation, the raising of the support walls to the roof and the extension of the insulated membrane roof already on the front three-quarters of the building.(Much of this work can proceed now — if we can pay the contractors. So give today.)
We are so close to getting this done. The only thing we need is a financial boost to pay for the labor and materials. And we really need to enclose the building, which as been partially open to the elements for a couple of years. That exposure takes a toll — so in 2016 your support is critical.(We pay no salaries, all donations go directly to project costs.)
Please include the Stone Bank in your Give to the Max contributions today and beyond. (And if the Give to the Max site is down or too slow, please use our gofundme page — or send us a good old-fashioned check, made out to our nonprofit, Touchstones, Inc., P.O. Box 272, Bottineau, ND 58318.) Thank you!
Sharon and Mike
stonebankblog 
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