School campaigns are going strong this year. Here are a few pictures of what is being done in the city schools.

South Lawn Elementary had a pumpkin decorating contest. Students and faculty can vote on their favorite pumpkin by using their change. Check out these awesome pumpkins...

Way to go!

At Central Elementary this neat display was on the art door.

The Students and teachers got in the campaign spirit by a fun game of volleyball. Students who donated to the United Way to take their shot at beating the teachers on this beautiful fall afternoon! What a fun way to LIVE UNITED!

Kick Off

The 2008-09 was kicked off by another great event. The "Taste of Coshocton County" was held on August 28th at the Lake Park Pavilion. Thanks to a great Kick Off committee, the hard working partner agencies, a fantastic group of board members and 500 of our community members, the event was a true success!

18 food vendors from around our county showed off their favorite foods.

Entertainment was provided by the Union Recreation Cheerleaders...Union Spirit. They rallied the crowd with United Way cheers. What cuties!

Miss Jennifer's Elite Dance Force strutted their stuff and danced their way into many hearts. What talented groups we had that night!

14 Longaberger baskets were given to 14 lucky participants in the basket raffle. Each agency creatively designed a basket and filled it with tons of great items.

The evening was a huge success! We raised over $4,000 in one evening, but more important, we came together as a community to kick off the campaign and Live United!

August First Fridays

Last Friday night was the First Friday event in downtown Coshocton. This has grown into such a wonderful family activity in our community.

With our annual Kick Off just around the corner, we took this opportunity to show off some of our 14 Longaberger baskets we will be raffling off at the event.

I'll try to get some up close pictures of these basket in the near future so you can check them out!

We also handed out free popcorn and bottles of water to those passing by. We had some of our wonderful board members there to help out with the event. This is a great night to talk with fellow community members and work together as a team to make such a pleasant night for Coshocton.

We even had the Mayor stop by and join us for some jump rope. He was really quite good!

What a great night! I hope to see you at the September First Friday Event!

Quite a donation!

The United Way of Coshocton was blessed this spring to get an unusual donation. A donor, who has asked to stay annonymous, donated a mobile home to the United Way. His mother had passed away and he hadn't been able to sell it. He wanted to move on with life, so he decided to gift it to us. We in turn, contracted with Peddicord Rice Auction Realty and held an auction. The trailer sold on June 30th for $21,000!

Needless to say we are thrilled! A huge THANK YOU goes out to the generous family who donated the home, to Peddicord Rice for bringing great results, the Coshocton Tribune for some great press on the event and to everyone who turned out that evening to show your support. The home sold to a nice family that is going to move it onto their property in order to move their elderly parents closer to them. This was a win-win-win situation for everyone involved.

If you have something different that you would like to donate to the United Way, give us a call!

We did it!

Thank you Coshocton! I know it's been a long time since I've blogged and I apologize. However, we have been working hard to pull together our community and achieve our goal! Thank you to all of those board members, division chairs and volunteers who worked so hard to make this happen. To date we are at 102.1% of our goal. -Raising $383,040.03! That's awesome!!

Last week we had our Annual Meeting and Awards Presentations. It was very well attended (especially being a very cold early morning.) We recognized all of our generous supporters along with thanking our 2007-08 Corporate Sponsor Jeff Drennen Dealerships. Smurfit Stone Containers was named, for the 8th year in a row, the Top Giver with pledges over $78,000.

We also were excited to announce the 2008-09 Corporate Sponsor: Ohio Heritage Bank. We are thrilled to have them on board and are looking forward to a great year of working together.

Campaign Kick Off

wow!!!!!

I know, I apologize. It has been a while since I have updated the blog. I think this will be worth the wait.

The 3rd annual "Taste of Coshocton County" happened on August 30th. What a night! The turnout was unbelieveable. Dave Powers, one of the great committee members estimated that we had easily 500 people there that night. What a wonderful thing for Coshocton! For those of you who don't know, it was the campaign kick off event.

There were 16 food vendors from around the county , who offered tastes of their specialty. For only $10.00 a ticket you could choose 10 different samples. I don't think anyone walked away hungry. The restaurants did a great job of bringing a variety of things to try.

A huge thank you to everyone who planned, helped or attended this evening.

What a success!!