The Albany Herald starts gofundme page for tornado and storm relief
One hundred percent of donations are going to storm victim relief
By Jim Hendricks
ALBANY — The Albany Herald has started a gofundme page — Recover Rebuild Renew Albany, Ga — with 100 percent of the donated proceeds going to disaster relief organizations.
The page, which can be found at www.gofundme.com/recover-rebuild-renew-albany-ga, went live Friday.
The funding will go to help those who were impacted by two severe weather storms that tore through Albany and other parts of Southwest Georgia. The Jan. 2 straight-line winds devastated parts of northwest, central and east Albany, claiming one life. Five people were killed in Albany and Dougherty County when a tornado, likely an EF-3, struck east Albany Jan. 22. A 2-year-old boy is also missing after that second storm system.
“The main thing was to utilize the power of the newspaper and its reach in print and online, along with the SCNI family of newspapers in the Atlanta market, to raise money for storm relief,” Ken Boler, general manager of The Albany Herald. “All of the money will go directly to our partner organizations.”
The Herald and its parent company, Southern Community Newspapers Inc., have partnered with three local relief groups, all of which have 501(c)(3) status.
“We’re just serving as the media point to help leverage the campaign,” Boler said. “We’ve lined up three organizations that we’re partnering with to get the donations where they need to go. One hundred percent of it goes to the relief organizations.”
Of the funding raised, 50 percent will go to United Way of Southwest Georgia, 25 percent to storm relief efforts by Mt. Zion Baptist Church and 25 percent to Sherwood Baptist Church’s storm relief efforts.
Boler said the page also was created to give those from other areas a place to help.
“I started getting calls from around the Southeast and other places wanting to know where to help and how to help, ” he said.
The Herald is also serving to forward donations of non-perishable items from another newspaper partner, the Tallahassee Democrat, where The Herald is printed each evening. The Democrat has begun collecting needed storm relief items and is shipping the donations to The Herald on the trucks that daily bring the newspapers to Albany.
“They sent up four large boxes of non-perishable items Friday morning,” Boler said, and another load was coming Saturday. The Herald is then distributing the donations to storm relief centers in the community.
“They said they’d keep sending them to us as long as the folks are donating down in Tallahassee,” Boler said.
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