This article from PioneerPress.com
Maja Beckstrom, Pioneer Press
Four times a year, a group of women gather in Shoreview and get to feel like big-time philanthropists.
They use a fishbowl.
The women are members of The Power of 100 Twin Cities Women Who Care.
It’s a nonexclusive club. You simply show up, learn about organizations in the community, vote and write a check for $100.
On a Monday evening in early December, dozens of women sat around tables in a hotel banquet room. A few women in the corner holding glasses of white wine playfully pounded a table in a spontaneous drum roll as the names of three nonprofits were pulled from a glass bowl.
The name on the first slip was Alexandra House, a battered-women’s shelter in Blaine. The second was Theresa Listening Center, a program for homeless women in St. Paul. The third was Second Stork, a volunteer effort to give free diapers to needy new moms.
At the end of the hour, one would be selected to receive the total of all those $100 donations, plus a matching grant from Best Buy founder Richard Schulze.
“When you multiply your money, the impact is so much greater,” said member Lisa Mattson of Shoreview. “And there is this wonderful synergy in the room of women who all have an interest in doing something for someone besides themselves.”
