By BRANDON BENNETT
Guest Columnist
I am Brandon Bennett, Director of Parks and Recreation Department for the City of Noblesville. I have been involved with Prevail for the last 19 years through the City County Bowlathon, which I started in 1999.
I initially started the event as a way to get city and county employees together in a fun environment outside of work and create a friendly competitive competition between the two units of government. I decided to tie a charity to this event when we realized we had the potential to make some money in addition to our relationship building between the city and the county. I chose Prevail out of respect for my soon-to-be father-in-law, the Honorable Steven R. Nation. He helped to create Prevail when he was prosecutor as he saw a service that was needed for victims of domestic abuse and violence.
Photo provided
I reached out to Prevail to gauge their interest and they jumped right in and helped plan and implement the event as the benefactor of the proceeds.
The first year, as we were learning the ropes of putting on a fundraiser like this, we had a successful year and were excited to move forward. At this point I was really starting to understand just how important Prevail was to the community and, just how much their services were, unfortunately, needed. As the years progressed we have tried to look at many different ways to keep the event fun, competitive, successful and, most importantly, relevant.
We have worked with many different people at Prevail over the years with this event and all of them are passionate about the mission of Prevail. With their passion and my understanding of what they truly did, my passion grew for them as well. I desperately wanted to find ways to drive more and more money over the years to truly support them as much as possible.
We have always tried to make sure the experience has been a good one for the bowlers as well as they are the ones out raising the money. We wanted to find ways to connect them with Prevail’s mission so they could truly understand what they were out raising money for.
We continue to try to connect with them every year and try to figure out how to push them to raise more money for this amazing cause. In the last few years my wife has become a board member at Prevail and serves to their mission. It has become a family passion for us and is one of the main charities we support personally and professionally. Over the 19 years of this fundraiser we have raised over $475,000! Wow! Who would have thought our little bowling event could have this impact on a cause in our community? Certainly not me!
Next year is our 20th anniversary in 2020 and we hope to hit the $500,000 mark to celebrate. I know we all have our causes that we believe in and support, but I would encourage you to consider making Prevail one of your causes. They won’t stop working until their services are no longer needed.