Based on women’s group, members each give $100 to chosen nonprofit

A group of men can have a major impact if they pool their resources to help the community.

“The 100 Women Who Care were our inspiration,” 100 Men Who Care Verde Valley Alliance co-founder Damian Bruno said. “Judy [Reichert] came over to the Rotary Club of Sedona Village and was the presenter at one of our spring meetings.

“Roger May, and myself and David Gill, said, ‘… that’d be something good to have local men get involved with. But summer was coming, and people tend to travel, so we kind of put it a little bit on the side. And then come August, we got together and started pushing.'”

The group is scheduled to have its first Giving Circle on Monday, Oct. 19, at the Village of Oakcreek Association Clubhouse 690 Bell Rock Blvd. from 5 to 6 p.m.

Organizers anticipate its three, hourly meetings a year will translate to a big impact for local nonprofits.

For the inaugural meeting, three local organizations will present their work: The Verde Valley Imagination Library, which provides free books to local children; Verde Valley Wheel Fun, which offers after-school mountain bike camps to more than 2,000 students at 50 schools across the state; and Verde Villages, a Cottonwood-based organization that provides free clothing and baby items to local families.

“Three nonprofit organizations are chosen and vetted prior to each meeting,” Bruno said about the groups that will have 10 minutes each to present. “At that hour meeting, the members vote, and they write a check to the chosen nonprofit directly. So there’s no bank account, no overhead, just something simple.”

Each member then gives $100 to the chosen charity. The chosen organization will then return at a future meeting to discuss what they did with the funds.

“It’s a great way to get money to charities that are doing so much work. There’s so many charities in the Verde Valley, and all have the common need of having to spend time to raise money. This helps them raise money with very little effort on their part as well.”

The goal is to have 100 members each contributing $100 a meeting. Bruno said he currently anticipates “40 to 50 men at the first meeting. I believe the women’s group has 200 women that participate. So I don’t see why we couldn’t eventually reach those numbers.”

“Some members will still decide to write the groups that are not selected a check as well,” Bruno said. “They also get the exposure of being in front of [currently] 40 to 50 men, many of them professionals in the community or involved in other charities, that could be networking opportunities and so forth.”

Bruno added that the intention is to make the group simple both with its time commitment and how it’s administered.

“There’s no formal board — we’re trying to create a situation that anyone can really run the meetings, and that the entity itself will continue and not having the apparatus weighing it down, like bank accounts and so forth, makes it easier for it to continue because everyone is just giving to the organizations that come in,” he said.

The group covers Sedona and the Verde Valley. Its future meetings are scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 19 at a location in Cottonwood and Monday, April 19, in Sedona, and it will be rotating the meeting locations.

“The 100 Women and the 100 Men — it’s a national concept,” Bruno said. “It’s very loosely organized. That’s the whole point — to make it … Rotary Club, very intensive with rules and regulations. This is the opposite. It’s very fluid. There’s no bank account. You write your checks directly to the chosen nonprofit.”

For more information about 100 Men Who Care Verde Valley Alliance contact Bruno at Damian.Bruno.Coldwell.Banker@yahoo.com or 928-202-0038, or David Gill at davidhgill@gmail.com 928-202-2687.