Remember to Give Where You Live When Making Year End Gifts

2020 has been very a different year for everyone. The Greater Belhaven Foundation has powered through by re-imagining events, fighting to get electronic signatures for the Community Improvement District Petition approved and going to extra lengths to show everyone what the formation of the Community Improvement District could mean for our neighborhood.

Our big push in 2020 was to get the petition signed to form the Greater Belhaven Community Improvement District. It has not been easy. The pandemic slowed efforts considerably, but we were successful in getting the City of Jackson to change the petition signature requirement to allow us to use DocuSign. This gave residents the opportunity to sign from their computers and limit volunteer contact.

The “100 Reasons Belhaven” social media campaign brought much deserved attention to all the wonderful things that Greater Belhaven has to offer. Obviously, there are way more than 100 reasons to love this place we call home and social media proved us correct. Our thanks to all who posted and participated.

A major part of the summer social media campaign was to show everyone how much greater our neighborhood can be with the formation of the Community Improvement District. The Foundation sponsored a clean up day along the soon to be Museum Trail, a street sweeping at the intersection of Riverside and Peachtree, and put emphasis on what added security in the neighborhood could look like. These activities demonstrated what the Community Improvement District would make possible.

The summer also brought fruition to a long labored Greater Belhaven Foundation project. The Museum Trail broke ground! Finally, after years of pushing and the Foundation creating the primary means of connecting the museums via the trail; it is ready for a ribbon cutting in January. Your gifts are so very important to helping to maintain our outdoor areas, this trail soon to be included in that list.

We need your support this year more than ever! The Covid 19 pandemic kept us from having Bright Lights Belhaven Nights which is a profitable event for the Foundation and helps fund our projects for the second part of the fiscal year. We were able to reimagine the event to create a neighborhood night out, modeled around a nationwide festival called Porch Fest. On the evening that would have been Bright Lights Belhaven Nights, neighbors put out lights to honor health care workers, several residents set up booths in their yards, and musicians played on their porches. It was not BLBN we normally have but it was a great evening none the less.

Please consider giving where you live this year when making year end gifts.  It is a gift you can make and receive the benefit of.  https://www.greaterbelhaven.com/help-us-grow/