Fishers Kiwanis serves the whole community

Fishers Kiwanis is a busy club, and thanks to President Howard Burd, the organization is serving young and old alike.

Burd is a Hollywood producer and writer known for, among other films, Amy’s F**k It List (2023), Mother’s Day (2016), and Ballbuster (2020). While that is Burd’s career path, it has nothing to do with his role with Kiwanis or how he has energized the club in recent months.

Fishers Kiwanis is 20 members stronger at the end of this year than they were at the beginning. That has given them the capacity to serve their community better than ever.

In October, Fishers Kiwanis went reverse trick-or-treating at Allisonville Meadows Assisted Living, 10410 Allisonville Road, Fishers. On Saturday, Dec. 14 they held their annual Holiday Hopes event in partnership with the Carmel Kiwanis and Fishers Youth Assistance, providing Christmas shopping to 64 local kids who otherwise would have had a less bright holiday season.

Holiday Hopes

Holiday Hopes involves taking kids on a shopping trip to Target to buy presents for themselves and their parents.

“It’s 64 kids, including 20 kids coming from Sheridan,” Burd said. “We do 20 every hour. Each of them has a really fancy cart that we decorate. We have the Grinch there in costume. The parents – we give them coffee, and each kid has an individual personal shopper.”

Kids get $100 to shop for themselves under the guidance of their personal shoppers.

“They get $100 worth of gifts for the child themselves to pick it out, because I wanted to make sure that the end user was the child and there was no filter in the family,” Burd said. “That’s why I devised having a personal shopper. Then another $25 goes to them buying their parents a gift. We have a gift-wrapping table at the Starbucks in Target. That way they have a nice gift to give their parents for the holidays as well. It’s teaching them to give back as well as them receiving.”

Reverse Trick-Or-Treat

“In October, I originally approached Allisonville Meadows to do a concert there,” Burd told The Reporter. “I thought it would be fun to do a nice country concert, and they said, ‘Why don’t you show up at dinner and you can see the lay of the land.’ I showed up and there’s like 10 people there. I asked where the other hundred residents were, and they said they usually just get the dinner delivered to them.”

So Burd decided a concert was not enough. He immediately started planning the concert for those who could attend and wanted to, but also what he called “reverse trick-or-treating” for everyone living at the facility.

Kiwanis members dressed up in Halloween costumes and went door to door passing out candy to every room.

“It was a huge hit,” Burd said. “Just so many smiles and everybody coming up to us saying ‘that’s just great’ because, to my surprise, a lot of the people don’t get a lot of visitors.”

Kiwanis has a mission about helping kids, but Burd is making sure on the local level, they also serve the elderly.

“When I first took over, I said, ‘I’m gonna do some things I know are not traditional, and I said I don’t really care if corporate international says anything to me,’” Burd said. “We’ve got to have a balance because really, when you’re supposed to get back to the community, you shouldn’t have to worry about age. Yes, we’re focused on the kids. We’re going to do 80 percent kids, but we’re also going to serve as the elderly community because I just think it’s so underserved.”

Burd’s Philosophy

Burd, who has been president of Fishers Kiwanis since September, has been a member since shortly after moving to Fishers a year and a half ago.

“When I first moved here, I felt it was really important to give it back to the community in some way, and Kiwanis had a tremendous background in terms of stability,” Burd said. “It is an international organization and they really focus on kids. I felt that the club had a lot of potential. It was kind of recovering after COVID because everything was recovering, literally. My wife, Lisa, and I wanted to do something for the community and it was a perfect fit. I like the direct impact it makes on the community, and honestly, they don’t require weekly meetings and heavy dues, so it’s very user friendly and very charity friendly.”

Burd said he thinks it is important to help those who need it.

“I kind of think it’s our duty as citizens to actually do something for others,” Burd said. “It should kind of come with living in such a great country. You should really try to help out others that aren’t maybe as fortunate as you. I just firmly believe in that, and that that’s the main fabric of Kiwanis – people that maybe honestly don’t have a tremendous amount of time, but they want to do something and there’s nothing better than doing something with fellow people.”

And what do the Burds think about living in Fishers?

“We love the community,” Burd said. “It reminds us of our old community in Roseville, Calif. It has access to the city a half hour away, but yet you have a lot of infrastructure here. That’s really positive and really it’s a really easy place to live. The people are really nice and they’re not afraid to grow. And they have a fabulous paper called the Hamilton County Reporter. It really keeps the city going.”

If you’d like to get involved in Kiwanis in Fishers, they meet every second Monday of the month at the Delaware Township Government Center, 9090 E. 131st St., Fishers. All are welcome. Please message them for details on Instagram at instagram.com/kiwaniscluboffishers or on Facebook at bit.ly/KiwanisClubofFishers.

And if you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the Burds’ favorite hometown newspaper at readthereporter.com/subscribe.